Less Merrie England
Sut,—I live in an invisible export, as you see from my address. This city is filled at the moment with visitors from every part of Europe and the United States, and I believe the authorities, the shops and the individual citizens are glad to give them a warm welcome. It is the more infuriating to see the scurvy treatment offered to them, as well as to the natives, in some of our restaurants. Catering may be difficult, and cooking may be a matter of taste, though I doubt whether there is any other country in Europe where a foreign visitor can be heard to make the equivalent of a Frenchman's venomous remark in Commarket Street recently: "At what hour does one take this filthy English luncheon?" But surely the service could be improved. I dined in a modest restaurant the other night where the food seems to me to be good, and which I have frequently recommended to friends and visitors. I went in at ten minutes to eight ; I was directed away from that part of the room where I wanted to sit because the waitresses had already begun to clear away the tables and chairs. By eight o'clock the place looked like a part-used Nissen hut, and the diners were expected to feel like convicts who had out-stayed their welcome.
Such behaviour seems to me to be inhospitable, bad manners, bad business and self-contradictory, and is regrettably common. When we complained, the management regretted &c., but pleaded the Catering Wages Act. The effect of that Act appears to be the ruin of the industry it was presumably dsigned to protect.—Yours &c., MICHAEL &tor.
136 Wytham Street, Oxford.
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