Too many calories, not enough mics...

There are days when you have to be thankful that the average American obtains 35% of their caloric intake from sweets, desserts, soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and red meat. Today was one of those days. If you have one of those days and happen to be on the Upper East Side, go to Gracie Mews restaurant (1550 1st Avenue, between 80th and 81st Streets). It's a modern, friendly diner that attracts a mix of young families, the more senior crowd, and younger groupies. It has a huge menu to leave you spoilt for choice and make you want to keep coming back, with classic diner staples, as well as pan-fried salmon, roast chicken, pasta and more fancy steaks and lobster.

But sometimes all you want is a cheeseburger deluxe with Swiss cheese, fries and coleslaw, a chocolate milkshake, a slice of New York cheesecake, and a coronary by-pass.....



And trust me, you won't regret it....

Sotheby's

Anyone got $4.2 million to spare? This rare and exquisite 14th Century Yuan dynasty blue and white baluster vase went under the hammer at Sotheby's New York today (Lot 61), as part of a week of auctions of Asian art and ceramics. I'm told there are only four such examples in the world. This work is highly prized because the blue colouring, derived from Persian cobalt, predates the more common Ming dynasty blue; the bold shape and fine detail of the peony scroll makes it highly valued. The piece was expected to fetch around $4 million. Having never been to an auction, it was really quite fascinating to watch the whole process. Bids started at $3 million and, after six bids, it was sold to a telephone bidder for $4.2 million. The whole thing lasted less than a minute. I more or less lost interest after that, because frankly, after you've seen bids for $4.2 million dollars, a wooden brush pot for $7,000 doesn't seem so exciting.

But I was trying to figure out the economics of bidding, and how people put a monetary value to these things (I gave up thinking how it is that people have a quarter of a million dollars to spend on a lobed brush washer). The whole thing seems very abstract, as in the end, it really all comes down to how much you're willing to pay for an object. There appears to be no metric with which to judge the inherent value of the artistic skill, age and rarity of an object, other than the amount of money someone is willing to pay for it. Money seems to be the one universal metric, probably because everyone understands it and because some people have more of it than others. That is, things have greater value if fewer people can afford them, which seems very strange. I, for example, can appreciate the skill involved in these things when explained to me, but I doubt I'd actually want to own any of them, even though I don't consider them to be valueless. It also makes me wonder whether things would cease to have value if everyone were equally endowed. Thoughts anyone?

Café Sabarsky

This one was JMG's choice. The Neue Gallerie (Fifth Avenue at 86th Street) currently has an exhibition of works by Paul Klee. Luckily, I got in for half price, an enticement for filling in a customer survey questionnaire. As with most multiple choice questionnaires, this one seemed to miss out the most relevant questions, e.g. "Would you willingly pay $15 to see the gallery?" It did, however, ask me whether my main interest in the gallery was "to view art in an intimate [read 'small'] environment". Anyway, suffice to say that modernism doesn't so much do it for me. The permanent Klimt and Schieler collection, however, is much better, but really the building is the best thing. It's built in the style of a European stately house with intricate detailing, marble staircase with gilt iron balustrade leading up to the second floor, with an impressive iron and glass cupula overhead. The two main rooms upstairs are each fitted with marble and dark wood panelling respectively. But the best thing about Neue is Café Sabarsky, Kurt Gutenbrunner's Viennese café serving Meinl coffee and traditional Austrian cakes, including Sachertorte, Linzer cake and the house's chocolate and rum Sabarsky Torte. At $5 a pop, the Wiener Mélange is probably the most expensive cup of cappuccino you'll have this side of Shanghai, but it really is nice coffee - surprisingly thin, but with a full, well-rounded taste. Und die Sachertorte hat viel geschmeckt. The décor is old style wood panelling with iron chairs and marble-top tables. In fact, only the smell of filter cigarettes is missing to invoke that 1920s feel, although we really must be grateful for Chapter 5, Title 17 of the New York Administrative Code...

For more of New York's Viennese, try Wallsé, Gutenbrunner's restaurant on the corner of West 11th and Washington Streets in Meatpacking, which I would have reviewed for you had it not been closed for a photo shoot (honestly, what is it with these New York models....?).

New York bistro

Thanks to EY for these two recommendations. Pastis (Little West 12th Street) is in the increasingly hip Meatpacking district, which seems to be sprouting trendy new restaurants by the dozen. The place is absurdly popular, so if you want to enjoy Sunday brunch in more than one cubic metre of space, I suggest you get there early with a big posse and spread out. Poached eggs seems to be the thing to have: eggs benedict looks like a good choice, or for something different, try eggs à la Basquaise, which come with onions, peppers and pancetta on a bed of creamy polenta.

Eggs à la Basquaise

Incidentally, Meatpacking has some amazing buildings, particulary in the cross-streets between Washington and Greenwich Streets; many of the old naval officers' residences still have the original doorways and wood or copper cornicings. Oh, and if you were that model doing a photo shoot in a skimpy pink dress on the West Side Highway in 50F degree weather, man I was feelin' for ya.......

Further east in SoHo you'll find Café Gitane (282 Mott Street), a French bistro with North African influence. Sit at the bar for a lesson in how to run an efficient kitchen. Two cooks run through all the dishes with amazing precision in the tiniest kitchen. Soup of the day was chick pea with some great focaccia, tasty but not greasy, and the Moroccan couscous with peppers, raisins, pinenuts, humus, eggplant and merguez is excellent. If you sit at the bar you can also see their huge bread bin stuffed with irresistible baguettes, which I'm told come from Parisi bakery just down the street (198 Mott Street).

Split pea soup

Moroccan couscous with merguez

How to induce diabetes...

In no particular order, but a good place to start would be brunch at Peter's on 1st Avenue between 83rd and 84th Streets. The place bills itself as a gourmet diner catering to the tastes of today's New Yorkers, which means a good gluten-free selection, egg white omelettes and all that sissy stuff (but seriously, if you're gonna have bacon in it, is there any point in ordering an egg white omelette??). For those of us who hunger for buttermilk pancakes (yes, schmandrea, I get the whole buttermilk thing now) with crispy Canadian bacon and scrambled eggs generously drizzled in warm maple syrup, however... well, you won't be disappointed! The new-agey mix of rushing waterfalls and Richard Marx might annoy you a little, but the calories more than make up for it.

You might want to continue your diabetes-inducing tour of Manhattan with a stop at Eileen's Special Cheesecake (17 Cleveland Place), which has been serving the creamiest cheesecakes in the city for over 30 years. Their selection of mini cheesecakes makes for a perfect, shameless, bite-size snack.

And after your exhausting walk around SoHo, you'll no doubt be needing a little rest for a relaxing pot of tea. Teaspot on 127 MacDougal Street, just south of Washington Square, has some 90 different kinds of tea, which you can enjoy while using their free wireless internet service. Try the mango green tea. And what better to complement it than a raspberry and mango muffin?

Or perhaps coffee and a pastry is more your thing, in which case you can pop one street east to 135 Sullivan Street and drop in on Once Upon A Tart, a bakery with a café attached. A strong cappuccino and a crumbly pumpkin tart come highly recommended. The building still has the original pressed copper ceilings, and offers a nice selection of muffins, tarts, brownies, gourmet sandwiches, salads and soups.

OK, that's enough for one day. More diabetes-inducing treats to come!

Eye of round

Greetings from New York City, where I'm currently in the process of eating my way through Manhattan. My general strategy is to work down all the avenues, starting with the odd numbered ones. I might move onto the cross-streets after. The good thing is that all the avenues lead down towards Chinatown. And so, it was in the mood for a bowl of Vietnamese soup noodles that I ventured down from Yorkville some 90-odd blocks down 3rd Avenue towards Canal Street. Third Avenue is nowhere near as cool as 1st Avenue, which takes you down urbanite Yorkville through the beautiful facade of the Bellevue Medical Center and the UN, and has just the right concentration of Japanese restaurants. Third takes you down the somewhat bland edges of downtown Manhattan and is mostly unexciting until it turns into Bowery, which is packed with cool restaurant kitchen outfitters strewn with new and refurbished ranges, fridges, freezers, mixers, display cabinets... of course, this isn't much use to anyone who doesn't own a restaurant, but it's fascinating to look at anyway. Below that is a whole bunch of lighting stores, too.

Anyway, after a brisk 90 minute walk I decided I would drop into the first Vietnamese restaurant I spotted, but in fact, I ended up going to the third. And a good call it was, too, because this was quite possible the oddest place I could ever have picked. Pho Banc is a hole-in-the-wall canteen on 3 Pike Street. I wasn't entirely clear whether I should try speaking in Cantonese, given that my Vietnamese isn't so good, but I opted for English instead. This, of course, was not such a great idea, as I later realized that all the signs were in Chinese, and probably contributed to my generally being looked at with disdain. In any case, from what I gather, the restaurant's menu is more or less limited to 'any part of cow you want' in soup noodles. And trust me, I mean any part of cow - even parts of cow you might never have known existed. I refer you, for example, to my chosen dish: 'Six differences type of beef [sic] with soup noodle (brisket, eye of round well cooked, tendon, omosa [I forget what the other two types were, if they were actually written on the menu...]'. 'Tendon'? 'Eye of round'? 'Omosa'? Well, curiosity got the better of me... I took 'eye of round well cooked' to imply that this was the whimpish version and, not to be taken for a mere tourist, opted instead for the choice of 'eye of round' that wasn't well cooked. "No! Don't do it!" I hear you say, but it was too late... the dour waitress gave me this suppressed look of surprise, hiding what I could feel was the evil laughter happening inside her head: "Bwah, ha, ha, you fool! You've asked for it now!" But she managed to limit herself to: "OK", walking off to the ksshh, ksshh, ksshh, ksshh sound of her dragging slippers. Anyway, five minutes later, the below was slid onto my table, and let me tell you now that it was delicious. The soup in particular was really tasty - those extra parts of cow certainly add extra flavour...

I take it that 'eye of round' doesn't have a literal meaning, as despite my anticipation of an Indiana Jones moment, I didn't spot any eye in my soup. On further research, however, 'omosa' appears to have been a typo, as according to dictionary.com the correct spelling is 'omasa', referring to "The third division of the stomach of a ruminant animal, located between the abomasum and the reticulum. Also called manyplies." 'Manyplies' is, of course, a much more useful and descriptive term...... oh, and don't let me forget the ice coffee, which is really nice, although you have to be patient for it to drip down.

So there you go, 'any part of cow' in soup noodles on 3 Pike Street. Go for it. It rocks.

Ice coffee

Eye of round in soup noodle

Silk

Fusion seems to be the cuisine of the moment in Atlanta, no doubt a symptom of its increasing gentrification. That's no bad thing (fusion that is, rather than gentrification) as long as it means more places like Silk (919 Peachtree Street, Midtown).

Silk is Anna and Raymond Hsu's most recent addition to the Atlanta restaurant scene (after Hsu's Chinese restaurant and the Pacific Rim Bistro, both downtown). The slick decor offers lots of wood panelling and exposed vent tubes, with a choice of booths (with Thai silk cushions), tables, a cool pivoted glass-panel private room and a sushi bar with individual LCD screens. The menus are held together with chopsticks (ironically, they don't give you these for eating with) and offers a selection of Japanese 'tapas', seafood, sushi and sashimi, and steak and lobster. I chose some shredded duck breast grilled dumplings with dipping sauce (not extraordinary, but quite tasty) and, at the waiter's recommendation, seared tuna with black pepper, zucchini in a funky wasabi bechamel sauce and pickled red ginger. The tuna was delicious, although it leaves you a little confused at first, until you figure out that it's seared with holy basil and oregano, which is a very strange combination. Dessert was another of the waiter's recommendations: a huge Fuji apple double-dipped in caramel and dark chocolate, drizzled with white chocolate and encrusted with crushed pecans - that's a serious dessert. On the slight downside, their green tea was too strong, and their coffee's not so great. But the maître d' is really cute.... oh, did I type that?

Menu

Dumplings

Seared tuna

Mt Fuji Apple

The Super Veggie burrito

The burrito production line at Willy's (you can find one at the Mall at the Peachtree Center, Atlanta) is truly something to admire. There's usually a line outside the place, but such is the efficiency of the operation that you rarely have to wait more than five minutes. The whole transaction goes something like this:

Server 1: "Can I help you, sir?"
Me: "I'll have a super veggie burrito, please."
Server 2: "Super veggie black beans and rice?"
Me: "Yes, please."
Server 1 takes a pre-cut square piece of foil, writes SV on it with a black marker, puts a round tortilla on it, slaps on some black beans and some rice and slides it over to server 2 while you walk down the counter.
Server 2: "Super veggie everything on it?"
Me: "Yes, please."
Server 2 slaps on some guacamole, salsa, cheese, lettuce and sour cream and slides it over to server 3.
Server 3: "Super veggie here or to go?"
Me: "To go, please."
Server 3: "Anything else for you, sir?"
Me: "No, thanks."
Server 3 folds over burrito and wraps in foil, drops it in brown paper bag with some tortilla chips and slides it over to the cashier.
Cashier: "Super veggie?"
Me: "That's mine."
Cashier: "Any drink for you?"
Me: "I'm good, thanks."
Cashier: "That's $3.95."
Me: "Here you go." And there's your lunch in a bag......

Chicken 'n waffles

Legend has it that celebs patronizing Wells restaurant in Harlem into the late night hours couldn't decide on whether to have dinner or breakfast, whereupon chicken and waffles was born. Gladys Knight and Ron Winans brought the concept down south with two Chicken and Waffles restaurants in Atlanta (try the one downtown on 529 Peachtree Street). The place has old-fashioned soul decor with black and white Gladys Knight photographs hung up on the walls, although I didn't once hear 'Midnight Train to Georgia' while I was there.

Try good ol' Uncle Ron's - fried chicken with a choice of two sides (I opted for collard greens and fried okra) and a cornbread muffin (which is amazingly good!). The sweet potato cheesecake sounds delicious, but my arteries have a limit...

Fried green tomatoes at The Flying Biscuit

I'd initially intended to go to this Atlanta landmark for Sunday brunch, but instead had to be content with watching the line outside from the Caribou coffee house opposite. So I decided to give The Flying Biscuit, on 1001 Piedmont Avenue, another try on Monday night instead. And a good thing I did, too. The place offers a modern outlook on southern classics - meatloaf sandwich, shrimp and grits, key lime pie.... I opted for fried green tomatoes with ricotta, and cornmeal fried catfish with cheese grits and collard greens, all of which was yummy. I must admit that I'm not a big fan of grits. The whole idea just puzzles me. But in moderation, with a flaky piece of catfish and spicy collards, they were delicious. Sadly, I had no room for dessert, although I'm told the cornbread pudding is excellent...

Salad, biscuit, ice tea

Fried green tomatoes

Catfish with pear compote on cheese grits and collard greens

Who's afraid of the big bad C-Tran?

When they named Atlanta's metro system, one feels they were somewhat generous in their use of adjectives. The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transport Authority (MARTA) would more appropriately be called MALTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Leisurely Transport Authority). And it's a shame, because if people didn't feel the necessity to drive everywhere and used public transport more often, the service might be much better. I've lost count of how many quarters I've lost to the token machines... but as it is, public transportation, and buses in particular, remain a low income form of tranportation (in contrast to London, where running a car often actually works out cheaper....)

I'm telling you this because I tried getting to Spivey Hall yesterday without a car. Spivey Hall is one of the best new chamber concert venues in the US, largely the result of a donation by Emilie Parmalee Spivey and Walter Boone Spivey, an orthodontist who made millions on real estate. The hall is situated on the campus of Clayton State University, south of Atlanta (incidentally, the campus is beautiful). It turns out, however, that nobody I asked about Spivey Hall actually knew what the heck it was, or how to get there. I was kindly given directions down the I75 at the hotel, but not having a car, they weren't all that useful to me. So I opted for taking the MARTA down to the airport (easy enough), and trying for a cab. Of course, I couldn't find a cab driver who knew how to get there, and the information desk at the airport tried to send me back up to Georgia Tech, despite my assurances that Spivey Hall was at Clayton State. After much enquiry, I managed to find out that C-Tran, the Clayton County Bus Service, runs the 501 to Clayton State, a true bargain at $1.50 for a 25 minute bus ride. Eventually I got to the hall and got to talking with the hall's manager about how inconvenient it was to get there, to which she responded in a not entirely unpatronizing tone: "Well, good for you, for comin' out here and being brave enough to get on the MARTA and the C-Tran all by yourself!" which didn't so much fill me with confidence...... especially since I had to go back the same way. But it was actually quite a nice bus ride. A little intimidating going by yourself if you haven't done it before, but I wish more people would do it. Although with only one service an hour, it's not exactly convenient.

That, of course, wasn't the end of my transportation woes. I grabbed a cab back in Atlanta to go to Sylvia's restaurant on 241 Central Avenue. Of course, the poor guy had no clue where Central Avenue was. Thankfully, I thought, I'd brought a map, although the guy didn't seem like he knew how to read one of those either and we spent a half hour going in circles around the Capitol and MLK Drive before we decided to give up on the idea. Good thing he didn't charge me, as I later found out that Sylvia's had actually closed down..... so I opted for the Pacific Rim Bistro instead, on 303 Peachtree Center Avenue. It has a modern take on Asian dishes, and the sushi's not bad either. The yellowtail sashimi's particularly good.

Fried tofu bags with shitaki, scallions and mozarella

Salmon, tuna, yellowtail sashimi, nigiri and California rolls

No room for dessert sadly!

Not so Hotlanta....

I love Atlanta. I hadn't made it five minutes out of my hotel and some kid was already hitting me up for drug money. Are you for real? I was up at 5am. I was in a completely different country. I was at the airport by 7am. At 9.45 I was in the air on a nine-hour flight to Miami. I then spent two hours passing through immigration, customs and baggage reclaim. Then another two-hour flight to Atlanta, and another hour to get the MARTA, all the while dragging a 23kg suitcase, a poster tube, a Crumpler shoulder bag, a carrier bag, and my winter coat. The last thing I feel like doing is giving you drug money.....

On the upside, I also got hollered at by some girl in a black SUV - a new, yet strangely empowering experience for me. "You lookin' good t'day!" And given that I'd spent the past 25 hours on trains, planes and automobiles, and generally felt like I'd been run over by a train, I was more than happy to take that as a compliment.

And speaking of planes. By all accounts, American Airlines has quite a funky personal entertainment system, with on-screen, touch-sensitive menus that let passengers control everything other than that screaming kid on the centre aisle. As plane food goes, it was pretty passable, consisting of beef stew, gnocchi and spinach. The same can't be said for the stuff they pass off as coffee, however. Although to their credit, other than calling it coffee, they're actually quite clear about what they're serving you. After all, it doesn't look like coffee, it doesn't smell like coffee, so why the hell should it taste like coffee?

Then there was the two-hour stopover at Miami, the only pleasant part of which was.... well, actually, there was nothing pleasant about it. Unless you like waiting in line for an hour to have your picture and prints taken, picking up your luggage and giving it back at the other end of the room, then lining up another 30 minutes to take your shoes off, take the laptop out of your bag, take your belt off etc.

Fortunately, after all that, my hotel room is absurd. It has two queen size beds, a kitchen with fridge/freezer, microwave, electric stove and oven and dishwasher, a laundry room with washer/dryer and ironing board.... of course, it's all kind of pointless, because you have to pay extra for flatware, cutlery and cooking utensils. Plus, where the heck in Midtown am I gonna find a grocery store......? So the hotel restaurant is thus to be commended: crispy eggplant stack with clementine and sweet red pepper salad, and beef short ribs with gnocchi (I was curious to see how it would compare to the AA version....). I'd have taken pictures, but these fancy restaurants seem to make a point of dimming the lights as low as possible so you can't see what you're eating.

My fight against jetlag continues....

Piazzolla Forever

Last night the Barbican was alive with the sounds of tango nuevo. French accordionist and one-time Piazzolla protegé, Richard Galliano, was performing a programme dedicated to his former mentor. In the first half, Galliano's own New York trio, made up of drummer Clarence Penn and bassist James Genus, were joined by veteran vibraphonist and former Piazzolla collaborator, Gary Burton, for an eclectic set that included Piazzolla standards, Galliano's own compositions and even a swingin' spin on Bach's Sinfonia in G. The accordion's not an instrument that you'd instantly associate with jazz or coolness, primarily because of its folk roots and the fact that it makes the player look permanently pregnant. Galliano, however, has managed to re-invent accordion music, expanding its range as a rightful exponent of contemporary jazz while maintaining the instrument's roots in traditional French music, much in the way that Piazzolla himself re-invented tango.

In the second half, Galliano was joined by the Piazzolla Septet, consisting of piano and string sextet, for a set of mostly Piazzolla music. Galliano himself switched between the accordion and more traditional bandoneón, which is nothing less than a miracle of an instrument, so much so that it's almost incomprehensible how anyone can play it at all. The violins in particular were fiery, with all of Piazzolla's driving rhythmic and percussive effects. On the slight down side, I found that a full string section isn't best suited for new tango and some of the arrangements were too elaborate. Not to mention that the double bass player looked more like he was pole dancing.... but Galliano himself was a firebomb, and his solo version of Libertango was something to gawk at in amazement. I expect that Galliano's Piazzolla Forever won't compete with Piazzolla's own recordings for quintet or septet, or even Gidon Kremer's Hommage à Piazzolla, but for sheer energy and for supporting the Piazzolla cause, it'll no doubt be joining my CD collection soon....

Secrets of the ATM...

There is one thing I like about banks, and that's being outside of them.... which brings me onto ATMs. You've been there - you need some cash, you come across the only ATM within a 10-block radius, there's a line, but you think, well, there's only a couple of people in front of me, and I since I'm here, I might as well just wait a bit. And then you end up waiting like 10 minutes while the person in front of you is furiously punching away at the buttons and the thing is flashing and making all these beeping noises, and there's all this sighing and then cursing, and then the card comes out, and goes in again and more key punching and more flashing and beeping, and then, finally!

What the heck do people do at ATMs?? As far as I know, there isn't that much to do at an ATM. You punch in a four-digit PIN, push one button for cash with/without receipt, and another one for the amount. If you're feeling really adventurous, you might ask to see your balance on-screen, which is a whole two other buttons to push. The whole thing takes 20 seconds. How do people manage to spend five minutes at these things? I used to think there was a secret combination of keys that lets you play Space Invaders, kinda like those Easter Eggs you get on DVDs. But try as I might, I haven't even been able to find PacMan on there. Somebody tell me, am I not getting the most out of my ATM experience??

Why I hate banks...

Quite frankly, what is there to like about banks? True, they're full of money, but most of it isn't yours anyway, and the effort that you have to go through to get to that infinitesimal fraction that is actually yours is enough to make you wish society still functioned on a bartering system... Why I hate banks:

1. They're full of other people going through the same painful experience to get to their money, and they're usually in front of you. And if they're behind you, then they're probably just as annoyed that you're in front of them as you are that the other people are in front of you.
2. Not unlike Sainsbury's Central (see The self-checkout), they have a dozen cashier windows, 10 of which are usually un-staffed, as if to demonstrate the potential for efficiency, if only they could be bothered to employ enough staff to actually 'serve' customers.
3. I use the term 'serve' advisedly, for banks very rarely provide the customer with what they actually asked for.
4. Conversely, banks seem to be very good at offering you stuff you don't want, and being very patronizing when you tell them that you don't want it.

Let me illustrate: I recently wrote my penultimate cheque (yes, I do, on occasion, still write cheques). Now, my cheque book says that once I get to my last five cheques, a new book should be sent to me automatically. Yeah, right.... My bank's website also says that if I need to order a new cheque book, I should go to my bank branch and order one. So I go to the bank, wherein I decide I should ask if I can order a cheque book at the cashier, or whether I should wait for a personal banker. The bank, after all, has a very helpful reception/triage desk for general queries. Or at least it would be helpful, if only there were anyone there... So then I figure, well, the line's not too long, so I'll just queue up for a cashier. Eventually, I reach the window, whereupon the following exchange ensues:

CCT: "Hi, I need a new cheque book. Can I order one here?"
Cashier 5: "A cheque book? You can call customer services...."
CCT thinks: "But I'm in a bank, why should I have to call customer services...?"
Cashier 5: "Have you had a cheque book before?"
CCT thinks: "Umm... I just told you I need a NEW cheque book... does this woman think I've gone twenty-some years without ever having written a cheque?!?"
CCT: "Yes, I have."
Cashier 5: "Oh, then maybe I can order one for you."
CCT thinks: "Eh?? *maybe* you can order one for me??"
Cashier 5 : "Do you have your card?"
CCT hands over his bank card. Cashier 5 proceeds to punch keys on her computer.
Cashier 5 (still staring at her screen and randomly punching keys): "Do you have a mortgage?"
CCT thinks: "Eh?"
CCT (thinking he's misunderstood): "I'm sorry?"
Cashier 5: "Do you have a mortgage?"
CCT: "Erm... no, I don't."
Cashier 5: "Are you likely to want a mortgage?"
CCT thinks: "You mean for that house I'm not likely to buy?"
CCT: "No, I'm not."
Cashier 5 (looking up now, with an expression of incredulity, as if that's the most absurd thing she's ever heard anyone say: "Are you sure??"
CCT thinks: "Are you on drugs??"
CCT: Yes, I'm sure.
Cashier 5: "OK, well, never mind."
CCT thinks: "Never mind???"
Cashier 5: "OK, that's done. Your cheque book should be with you in seven to 10 days."
CCT: "Erm... thank you!"
CCT hauls ass out of bank before someone offers him life insurance....

And if you think I'm over-reacting, let me assure you that banks aren't the only places to take ever-increasing liberties with their customer relations. How's this for random: I'm at the cashier at WHSmith paying for a copy of The Saturday Guardian, and the guy goes: "Are you a fan of Harry Potter?" And I'm thinking: "Do I look like I'm 12, or are you hitting on me...?" Seriously, it's confusing! And in another store: "Are you OK there, buddy?" "Erm... who are you calling 'buddy'?!?"

Since when is it OK for businesses to treat people with such disingenuousness? I'm all for exchanging greetings, odd platitudes and smiles, but I'm not your buddy, and quite frankly, it's none of your business if I like Harry Potter or not....