Saturday, September 13, 2008

Hotel Recommendation
I went to London last week and stayed at the Copthorne Tara hotel in South Kensington. It was very nice and not just because it had a free bar between 6.45 and 8.15pm and an Asian restaurant that did a mean Nasi Goreng. During the free drink session, I got chatting to an elderly man from Leeds who, from what I could gather, was some sort of food scientist. We were chatting about the current fortunes of the England team and in particular the hat-trick scored by Theo Waldcott in the game against Croatia. He said the last England hat-trick he could remember was scored by David Owen. I instantly registered the mistake. but I did not have the confidence or inclination to correct to correct a practical stranger.

Although he kept talking, I spent the following few minutes wondering how he could have possibly got Michael's first name wrong. He is constantly in the paper and is easily in the top ten well known English footballers. The conversation continued on to Andy Murray's chances in the forthcoming American Grand Slam Final; there was no sign that my companion had any knowledge of his previous slip and then out of the blue the self same thing happened again. He compared Andy Murray's dour personality to "Michael McEnroe". Michael! Again, the slip up struck me as if someone had just thrown a glass of ice water in my face. How can anyone get this name wrong, probably the most well known name in tennis. What sort of affliction involves getting the names of top sports people wrong with such regularity whilst showing no other signs of word blindness? What is it a coincidence that the first name given to McEnroe really belonged to Owen. The classic Two Ronnies sketch came to mind, where the contestant's specialist subject was being able to provide the answer to the question previously asked.

The free bar was coming to the end, and to be honest I was getting a little weary of my companion. Even though he was a fellow Northerner, he did seem to have a very fixed opinion on everything. He reminded me a little of Geofrrey Boycott, or Barry Boycott as my companion might say.

MrT 9/13/2008 10:44:00 pm [+] : Feedback!