Very High Rollers

When Chantelle requested we go to the least English restaurant in the building, I suggested the Jewish deli, but my soul food did not interest her. We went to a restaurant actually named “America.” It has a thirty-foot relief map of the USA hanging from the ceiling. Her non-English meal was a pork chop with chutney. (Chutney is technically Indian.) [You mean India is not just a part of the U.K.? Who can keep track?] I tried to be a “‘Merican” and ordered the barbecue plate. It was half a chicken with a half rack of ribs topped by a terribly mediocre sauce. [Um. That could be what makes it authentic American. I’m just sayin’ … You’d need to be Southern to get good BBQ, and anyone who thinks that’s part of America has clearly never been there.]

We were going to meet Lucky at the Peppermill for dessert. I checked my watch and thought we had plenty of time. Chantelle checked hers and said it was an hour later. I thought she might have kept hers on GMT time and made an arithmetic error, but I checked my phone and she was right. I had inherited my father’s old Accutron watch. It has a clear face showing the old style electronics. On Mad Men it was described as “Not just a timepiece, but a conversation piece.” It had just come back from the jewelers, and now the battery had died. [Nevertheless, the Mad Men appear to have been correct. We have been spending all this time talking about a broken watch, after all. We even have pictures of the broken watch. Sometimes I worry about us … ]

I wanted a picture of the watch and was surprised to discover that my Galaxy S5 got a better photograph than I could with my Nikon Coolpix. Maybe that is why the phone is more expensive than the camera. [For a computer geek Lon has remarkably poor taste in camera gear. It’s a mystery. And if he had better friends they would probably not tease him mercilessly all the time. … Better friends are boring, by the way.]

Even More Risque: Tanya Tate: Insects is Best

We were running a bit late, so I returned to the Riviera by freeway rather than the scenic route. Then we went next door to the Peppermill. I had been told that Chantelle was shocked by the size of the portions at her first colonial meal. Possibly this is at least a partial explanation why her figure is significantly different from that of the typical American. When she saw an ice cream sundae served, her eyes almost popped out of her head. (They might call it a smart phone, but it stupidly focused on the food rather than her lovely face.) [In America we have a term for that: We call it Operator Error. Now Lon has TWO instruction manuals to read. And if we tell him we snuck in a few pictures of Chantelle, he might even read them — unless he has to download the files. … Lon still reads books that might give paper cuts too. We love that about Lon.]