There are a few days in the calendar which Hospitality staff would prefer to avoid if at all possible. The days when the people who don't really know how to behave in restaurants come out to play, the overbooked days, the days when people walk in and are frankly astonished, nay, outraged that no table is available for them. New Year's Eve? Yes, to an extent, though that's generally mitigated by high prices, the Christmas season in general is a cockpit for terrible behaviour on the part of the general public, so NYE doesn't really stand out so much as you'd think. Valentine's Day is always a shithouse, not only because all of your tables becomes tables of 2, so the amount of people you do is generally quite disappointing, but because it's normally booked by blokes, so doesn't fill up until the last second (yes, yes, a terrible generalisation, I know, also true). But it does have the upside of there generally being a spectacular break-up to gawp at, plus
I'm always surprised that people are surprised. Yes, I know, that makes me the idiot. Unless you've been very sensibly ignoring all broadcast and print media over the last week, you'll doubtless be aware that the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain are having a normal one. It all started when Suella Braverman, like a garden gnome made of spite, decided to start opining about how "Islamists" are in "in charge of Britain" (Community notes added context that some readers may find useful: they are not). So far, so unsurprising, Braverman's rhetoric has often tended towards the wilfully oppositional, and she's clearly on manoeuvres to be the leadership candidate of choice when the Tories are immolated at the next election. The intensity of the charge, and the spouting of the conspiracy theory that Sharia law is incoming in the UK (where a grand total of 11% of the population identify as Muslim, reality fans) were slightly eyebrow raising