What a Nightmare

Today is Saturday. I’ve had a dreadful night’s sleep – or rather, none sleep. Fitful, restless, anxiety-filled; it’s been awful and I’m now exhausted and have a headache. It’s probably Cold Turkey from not having had any alcohol for 72 hours now, although my theory is that it’s the antibiotics themselves that are crippling me. The side effects listed on the leaflet are alarming to say the least – nausea, vomiting, stomach problems, blotchy skin and the swelling of lips, tongue and around the eyes (to name but a few). To name a few more: bone marrow depression disorders leading to infections, bleeding, paleness, headaches and tiredness. The strange thing is that these tablets are supposed to be making me better. The wonders of modern science, eh?

At one point in the night I got out of bed to watch television, thinking it might tire me. I watched a very strange programme called The Restaurant. What a load of old rubbish these programmes are – and there are so many of them too. This one apparently has a group of restaurateurs who are each (well, each couple) running their own restaurant. They are then set a series of challenges by Raymond Blanc who has the power to close the participants’ restaurants if they fail the challenge. Seemed a bit harsh to me, but presumably there is method in his madness. Last night there were three couples taking part in the challenge and they each had to prepare a banquet for three separate groups of people. To complicate matters (or set the challenge), they had to prepare and serve these banquets inside three separate marquees erected in the grounds of what looked like Blenheim Palace (I missed the beginning of the programme). They had the use of something resembling an army field kitchen, and a staff of inexperienced local yokels. Tough work.

After the various debacles of frantic failures and surprising successes (of the culinary kind), Monsieur Blanc gathered his victims in front of a mirror-topped table to deliver his verdict, Alan Sugar-style. It was all very formulaic, with the usual irritating voiceover trying to get us to guess which couple would fall foul of the Maestro’s laser-like analysis of their efforts (as if we cared).

The losers were two rather sweet young guys (brothers) who together were running a restaurant called The Treacle Tree. It seemed that their biggest mistake in preparing the banquet was to serve pink, blood-oozing roast lamb to a group of Bangladeshi dignitaries. I thought the lamb looked scrumptiously succulent and mouth-watering, but I fully appreciate that it might be a tad insensitive to serve it to a group of people who had requested an halal meal. Silly boys.

“The customer’s requirements are everything,” hissed the gallic chef, “and you totally failed to take them into consideration. I am sorry, but I am closing your restaurant.”

So that was that. The Treacle Tree (wherever it was) closed its doors and the brothers were back on the scrapheap. Apparently there were nine couples at the start of this series, and now only five restaurants remain open. My question is: Why? I haven’t seen any of the rest of this series so I don’t know what’s going on, but has the TV Company (or even Raymond Blanc himself) set this group of couples up in their own restaurants – presumably at great expense - just to close them all down again? Is playing so casually with people’s lives meant to be entertainment? This is outrageous – do it with dominoes by all means, but surely not with people. I despair.