A place where food is prepared and sold to the public as cooked meals; restaurant, café, bistro, brasserie – all the foregoing are foreign words and I can’t for the life of me think of an indigenous British word. Come on – help me out!
Is it just me, or does Kate Middleton bear more than a passing resemblance to Koo Stark?
There’s a tribunal going on in the UK over a BBC presenter who claims she was dropped from a programme because she wasn’t young and pretty enough. There’s a dilemma here – should clothes designers be allowed to use only beautiful models? Should teachers, perhaps, be selected solely on the basis of their youth and thus empathy with their charges?
Conversely, should make-up manufacturers employ only ugly munters to demonstrate their products, thereby enabling the consumer to see the added value the product can provide in extreme cases?
When all is said and done, one’s age and beauty are attributes one can do little to nothing about and thus, logically, should not be used as a means of discrimination. However, could you imagine car manufacturers draping Anne Widdecombe over the bonnet of their latest creation? You have to be realistic. If something is aimed at a youth market, then it makes sense to use young people to advertise whatever the product may be; similarly you’re not going to take well to a young dolly bird being used to market a zimmer frame or incontinence pad.
As with everything, especially see-saws, there has to be a balance.
8 comments:
There is rarely a balance with see-saws. As for the eating place, how about chippy?
Alan: I must disagree. Chippy is short for chip shop, which traditionally merely sells their produce over the counter (possibly on prescription). Once food is consumed on the premises, it becomes a restaurant.
We must surely have an indigenous word.
Eatery?
My experiences with see-saws has always been a bit up and down, off and on..
We're attracted to certain phenotypes, it's evolution, don't fight it.
Eating house, refreshment room, canteen, Naafi
Anon (Phil, I guess): NAAFI - I think not. Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes?
Refreshment room is a bloody bog in a train station.
Eating house is the nearest, but a bit brutal and sounds like something out of Dickens.
Inn is a contender, but you can't get away from the bed and board aspect.
Dunno Chairman, maybe Anon could be right. I always thought NAAFI stood for "No Ambition And F***all Interest" - kind of summed up a few of the UK eateries I've sampled! ;^)
What about Tavern?
Roger: a tavern is more a drinking place - and in any case it's old French.
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