A Day At The BMF

or

Don’t Cry For Me Onion Bhajee

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I still get excited about a day out.  I’m like a little kid, getting up early, looking at the clock, imagining what I’m going to see later, the only difference now is that it takes just a little longer getting out of bed, I crick my neck looking at the clock but luckily the imagination’s still active.

A strange title for a day out you might think, but all will be revealed.  John and Arls Scouse and Caroline arrive and we’re off.  An uneventful drive up to Peterborough, stopping at a Little Chef only to find it closed.  Right on the A1, BMF day, hundreds of bikers passing by, and the manager decides to close for the day. D’oh.  Never mind, there’s another one a few miles up.  Small problem, only two staff.  Apparently, health and safety regulations prevent Scouse from having his scrambled eggs.  Reassuringly, the waitress informs us that it might not be hygienic cracking open an egg.  Still, we can have anything we like on the menu, as long as we don’t ask for any variations.  Of course I immediately asked if I could have the bacon and eggs without the eggs, but the look I got told me it was probably wise not to venture too far down that path!

Anyhow, we arrive at the BMF and the excitement is bubbling again.  The last one I went to cost me a bike for Jen, so I was hoping for a slightly less expensive day today.  We meander towards the VSOC stand and found Sue and Ed, Paul, Nick and Rog.  The best thing about the whole day was being able to go back to the stand, rest your legs and refresh with a cup of tea and watch the poor sods, flagging as the day went on, walking around with nowhere to take the weight off.  Throughout the day we would meet the rest of the gang, Baz, Irene, Pete, Richard and Jacqui.  I had lots of conversations with people I’d never met before and still don’t know their names, but the bond of the VSOC meant it didn’t matter.  The sun’s shining, surrounded by bikes, getting watered every couple of hours – life is good isn’t it?

Well, as the day wore on, the purchases became apparent, and the winner is ………….Sue, by a Royal Star mile. Sue had a smile on her face, Ed wasn’t so convincing.  Oh, and a small diversion,  Sue had a significant birthday, at which point Paul did the right thing and put candles spelling out her age, into two doughnuts and we all sang happy birthday.  It had the desired effect, cos Sue went as red as her Heine Geriche bag.  We all bought crash helmets, trousers, t-shirts, Rog kept up his glove fetish. I know they were cheap, Rog, but did you check how many fingers they had?

So, a good day out nearly over, we wend our way home.  After some inventive off roading from Caroline, followed swiftly by me over the fields at the show, we manage to get out pretty damn quickly, I must say.  It’s funny how you can’t hear horns tooting at you when you don’t want to!  John kept threatening to pretend to tie his shoe laces, because he didn’t want to be seen participating at such blatant pushing in.

A quick journey back, dodging the hand held speed cameras on the bridges (hope you all saw them) and this is where the fun starts. 

Scouse: “Where shall we eat?”

Tel: “I know a place in Rickmansworth, just off the M25, a J.D. Wetherspoons, nothing fancy, just good cheap food”.

One of those points was correct.  We sit down, take our time working out what we want and take our easy little order to the bar.  After doubting the validity of my credit card, we start to order.  As it’s Sunday and the menu says All Day Roast, you would assume, that a roast wouldn’t prove too much trouble.  “Sorry Roast’s Off”, at which point Scouse diplomatically, and with all the tact that we’ve come to know and love says, “The Chef’s f***ed up, then”, the barman also employed for his subtlety, said “are you accusing us of selling too many dinners today”  Scouse, “I used to be a chef…..blah, blah”  Not a good start.  John, who wanted the roast, says he will have a steak instead, steak, chips and vegetables.  “Sorry, vegetables off, unless you want peas, we’ve got plenty of peas”  Peas it is then.

 The rest of the order went through without a hitch and we waited for our vegetable free meals to arrive.  One of the first to arrive was a wild west platter, full of ribs and chicken wings, minus the ribs and very few

 chicken wings.  It was at this stage that we started to look around for the candid camera crew, or at the very least to find Basil and Manuel hiding behind the kitchen door.  Caroline, very patiently, I thought, pointed this out and after many “sorry, sorry, sorry” apologies, you will hear this word a lot, we waited for the rest to come. Jen’s was sort of almost half ok Arls and mine nearly up to that standard, Scouse…….still waiting, Caroline, another big plate of what looked like chicken wings (if you can imagine them in a few layers of batter), but still zero ribs.  “Ribs off, sorry, sorry”  Still never mind chicken wings to look forward to. 

You really had to be there, it was one of those never repeated moments, one bite into the “chicken wings” and Caroline shouts “it’s an onion bhajee” I told her she must have ordered the wild east platter, but nobody heard it because we were too busy falling off of our seats laughing.  When we pointed this out to the chef, he didn’t say sorry this time. 

 “Shit” was all he could muster, followed by a few more mumbled expletives.  At which point the guests on the other table began pointing out that the chicken and bacon sandwich she had ordered was sans chicken.  “Chicken’s off” we shouted in unison.  Chef comes back, “I know what’s wrong, the onion bhajee’s found their way into the chicken bag” – well that’s all right then, eh, as long as we know. Oh, and by the way, Scouse’s order arrives just as we are all finishing ours.

 By this time it was just too funny for us to be angry.  We summoned over the manager, ordered him to pull up a chair, because this could be a

 long conversation.  As it was he was very understanding, and we got a very large discount.  The chef was last seen muttering to himself as he went home, I didn’t hear what Scouse called him, the manager got off very lightly and we had a laugh.  We sang songs on the way home about “don’t cry for me onion bhajee”  (It was the best we could come up with), their ribs non-existent, our ribs hurting from laughter.  What a day!

Tel ‘n Jen