[WillowTheWhisp]

Last night I went to bed at 3am this morning. It was Busman's works 'do' - on a canal barge at Botany Bay. The food was the most unimaginative I have ever had when eating out, not even on a par with a cheap self service cafeteria! Fruit juice or soup, which was tomato and as I'm allergic to that I chose the juice. It was like a cross between orange cordial and J2O with ice. The main course consisted of 2 slices of that reconstituted turkey they use for sandwiches, a medallion of stuffing the size of a 10p, a shrivelled cocktail sausage, some reheated carrot, slimy white cabbage and very strange potato slices which I couldn't work out how they'd cooked. They seemed to have been boiled and then deep fried (possibly as a means of reheating). For desert there was a choice of gateau (which turned out to be mousse), Christmas pudding which most people didn't opt for, probably on account of already having had plenty, and 'crumble cheesecake' which those of us who did select wished we hadn't. It was a very strange gelatin based creation in a hard pastry shell with a few unidentifiable crumbs on top and tasted of - precisely nothing.

The barge 'cruise' went up the canal for several hundred yards, turned round, went back down the canal for several hundred yards, turned round, went back up the canal for several hundred yards, and so on for 4 hours!

At least it's an experience we won't forget in a hurry. hurry