I squint every time I hear the word "Buffet".
I hate them.
What finished me off was going to my first (and only) FT "do" (we happened to be there at the same time) and buying my first buffet for mrs uk1 and me and I hadn't realised the importance that some of our colonial brothers place on the table they choose and it's proximity to the food. In hindsight, it was as though they had developed some sort of mental tape-measure that could calculate each seat and it's approximate travel time to the table.
I without knowledge of such things placed ourselves at the other end of the room. I missed them saying the magic key word which must have been FT for "Muster stations! Muster Stations! Descend and hoover now! Descend and hoover now!", but felt this enormous rush and vacuum of air as my fellow ft'ers descended onto the buffet into a buffinacious frenzy.
Never was so much buffet hoovered by so few.
We of course were at the wrong end of the queue - and we even did that "after you" business in that strange English way when we took pity on some people with panic on their faces ..... and by the time my little plump FT brethren staggered back to their tables with plates with food that ascended past their heads (and whilst some returned and pushed into the queue to collect "seconds" plates clearly panicing that the food might dissapear before some of us on "firsts" got theirs), mrs uk1 and I found ourselves on enforced diets. There didn't appear to be any thought about taking reasonable amounts so that others could have some as well.
Anyway, £70 for two cold chicken wings and a battered bit of tomato between us isn't good. As you can tell, I'm even sweaty about it now even though the ingress of time should have watered down the angst.
And then there's people who handle the food with their dirty little digits ..............
