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Originally posted by comet:
the secret is, nobody bathe. and when one does, we all do. So the weekly bath routine would work fine assuming we all bathed on the same day.

this message brought to you by rural Alaska. Come visit soon!

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Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

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Originally posted by Chocoholic:

I'm not a great one for receiving on the tongue, but even if I did would still feel my hands needed a clean.

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Out of interest, do you also sanitize your hands between tucking your chair in and eating your lunch? Or between greeting your friends in the church hall and getting to grips with a choccie hob nob?

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Most of the time where I eat I don't need to, we have chairs round the side of our staff room, if I ever go to the canteen whatever I get I'm using cutlery for.
With a name like mine you think I greet people before having a bickie?! No no no, I'm first in line, no one to greet
but I don't shake hands with people when I do (no one does, we say hello!).

Hand shaking during the peace was banned during the swine flu outbreak a few years ago and hand hygiene has massively cut hospital infection rates. At work we not only have to wash/sanitise our hands but do it in a certain way.

Piglet, I do agree, same with antibacterial house cleaners, I was bought up without 'em! I suppose frequent videos/teaching etc about bug transmission rubs off and having a household member who does need protecting from stuff means I want to avoid getting sick myself and passing it on.

Choccie (beginning to wish she hadn't started this)

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Originally posted by Meerkat:

Mrs. Kat and her mother meet once a week and go out for a drive and then it approaches midday. "Shall we have lunch?" "OK, where shall we go ". "Let's go to Wibbledore's Garden Centre". Why? There's a perfectly lovely little cafe about half a mile away!

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Originally posted by piglet:
I reckon people use hand-sanitisers too much, for two reasons: (a) if we kill all the bugs our immune systems will forget how to fight them; and (b) the smell of some of them makes my eyes water.

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• You turn the tap on - there is no plug for the basin so you leave it running.
• You wash your hands.
• You then touch the tap WHICH YOU LAST TOUCHED WITH YOUR SOILED HAND to turn the tap off.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Okay, this is freaking me out. You have restaurants in garden centers? I am imagining how far you'd need to place it from the manure bags...

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I consider the best garden centres, here in the UK, to be the ones that offer a Grand Day Out. We are fortunate to have one locally. You can buy tableware and crockery there, all sorts of gifts, cards, a limited range of books... Other sections have clothes, both the fashionable sort and the outdoorsy rugged sort, pet care, sweets, cakes, and a vast range of Christmas trees (real and artificial) and ornaments in season; also Santa's Grotto. There's a large restaurant where you can enjoy drinks, cakes, or a full blown meal, complete with a soft play area for the kids.

Oh, and some plants.

You could spend hours there.

Nen - who has.

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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
One got a write up in the county magazine and had as a selling point that she wouldn't serve solitary customers. (Could this be unlawful discrimination, or a hate crime or something?)

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At least they're up front about it. Many places pretend they don't have seats if you're a woman by yourself, try to make you sit at the bar, or pretty much ignore you.
(Hint -- I'll be in and out of your precious restaurant a lot more quickly than a couple or group, and single women usually tip well if they're given decent service.)

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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf

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Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
The manure is normally very separate from the restaurant

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Normally?!? Remind me not to accept a lunch invitation to that centre! (Mind you, our nearest one burnt down before Christmas - perhaps someone was cooking the compost)

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"Allons-y!" "Geronimo!" "Oh, for God's sake!" The Day of the Doctor

At the end of the day, we face our Maker alongside Jesus. RIP ken

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Originally posted by Rev per Minute:

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Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
The manure is normally very separate from the restaurant

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Normally?!? Remind me not to accept a lunch invitation to that centre! (Mind you, our nearest one burnt down before Christmas - perhaps someone was cooking the compost)

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I've never been to a garden centre to go to the cafe or for a day out and find it a little odd, but then I can't drive and also think it's probably an older person's activity.

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Are you a teenager? I spent several happy hours at our local one only yesterday, with my daughter. She's 24 and also goes up there with friends - those with small children play in the soft play area while the adults have coffee and chat.

Nen - young at heart.

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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.

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Originally posted by Nenya:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I've never been to a garden centre to go to the cafe or for a day out and find it a little odd, but then I can't drive and also think it's probably an older person's activity.

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Are you a teenager? I spent several happy hours at our local one only yesterday, with my daughter. She's 24 and also goes up there with friends - those with small children play in the soft play area while the adults have coffee and chat.

Nen - young at heart.

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I am 24. I just don't understand why you wouldn't go to a proper coffee shop? But then I don't have children and don't have local friends my age with children, and don't have any local garden centres accessible by public transport. I just think of garden centres as being for old people. Not even my parents visit them except for specifically buying plants or garden equipment, my parents would prefer to go to the pub. Perhaps it's a split between pub-goers and non-pub-goers? We've always been a pub-going family from my grandparents down.

It wouldn't occur to me to cater for children, although if children are in garden centres and not in my favourite coffee shop, that is a bonus for me I go to coffee shops when I've been shopping in town, and sit in them with a magazine and a pastry or maybe use them for a lunchtime panini.

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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Crockery, cakes, electrical goods, clothing--Are you sure we aren't discussing a shopping mall with a wee place for plants attached to it???? And a drive-thru????

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Originally posted by Starbug:

* Suddenly realises that 47 probably sounds very old to someone in their twenties.

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Originally posted by Starbug:
Excuse me, I'm only 47 and I love garden centres! * They don't just sell plants - I've bought clothes and Christmas decorations there and they also have a small range of electrical goods at my local centre. My friend's wife is the chef there and her cakes are wonderful, so I make a point of going to the coffee shop.

I didn't learn to drive until I was 42. When I was taking lessons, I used to promise myself that one of the first places I would drive to on my own would be the local Haskins. **

* Suddenly realises that 47 probably sounds very old to someone in their twenties.

** Other garden centres are available, but not so close to my house.

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Originally posted by ken:
I'm from the south-east of England and I've never heard of or imagined anyone going to a garden centre for lunch or to meet friends.

Coffee shops maybe, though they aren't really part of my culture. The place you go to socialise is the pub.


I tend to divide coffee shops (which in England are not the same thing as cafes) into three categories

- real ones, which are independent and not part of a branded chain and where the staff wear no uniforms and are almost always Spanish or Italian. They mainly exist in central London and overlap with sandwich bars. Mostly used by office workers buying lunch to take back to their desks. Often totally packed out a 1am and closed by 4. They have big old shiny esprrsso machines that still show their historical origins on the Italian railways. They can also make decent tea.

- fake chain coffee shops like Costa Lotta and Cafe Plastico. Staff wear uniforms and get minimum wage. Found in railway stations, franchised canteens in universities and motorway service stations, small towns where real local businesses have been murdered by Tescos, and in mid-market shopping malls and high streets. The espresso is often OK, the tea is crap, the food overpriced and oversweet, though alright for a hurried takeout breakfast if you are feeling flush.

- pretentious twat chains like Starfucks and, er, I assume there are others. Found everywhere. Customers mostly seem to be 19-year-old girls trying to look cool and wasted gay men with expensive clothes and Apple laptops. As far as I can tell they don't actually sell coffee so much as a variety of horrendously expensive mildly coffee flavoured milkshakes. I'm not completely sure as I've never been in one and never had occasion to either.

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Costa is actually genuinely Italian (or rather started in the UK by genuine Italians). Their coffee is certainly nicer than Starbucks whose coffee tastes burnt. Costa also pays all their taxes which is also good.

I am pretty at the 'wasted gay men' comment. I see as many older people in Starbucks as I do younger people, they just have normal people in like any other coffee shop. I've never seen anyone who's 'wasted' in a coffee shop of any description, and wouldn't assume their sexuality anyway

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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]

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Originally posted by ken:
I'm from the south-east of England and I've never heard of or imagined anyone going to a garden centre for lunch or to meet friends.

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

Well my mum is 43 but I wouldn't say 47 is old.

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I should hope not! What would you say about 60?

These garden centers with food sound like something someone should try around here. That might be a money-maker for the big box hardware/garden center stores. The hubby happily looks at routers and lumber, and the wife sits with a coffee or tea and has a sandwich. (Or in the case of several of my friends, the wife is the one admiring the routers and cabinets and such.)

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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.

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Originally posted by balaam:
They should forget about sanitised hands and sanitise the taps. Will someone not invent a self sanitising tap?

I find those "Now wash your hands signs sometimes found in pub and work toilets odd.

Let me explain. After using the toilet and cleaning yourself and adjusting your clothing you wash your hands. But it isn't that simple:

• You turn the tap on - there is no plug for the basin so you leave it running.
• You wash your hands.
• You then touch the tap WHICH YOU LAST TOUCHED WITH YOUR SOILED HAND to turn the tap off.

How can that be hygienic?

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by balaam:
You then touch the tap WHICH YOU LAST TOUCHED WITH YOUR SOILED HAND to turn the tap off. How can that be hygienic?

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You turn the tap off with a bit of paper towel.

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

I am just baffled as to why garden centres are so much more desirable to eat in than an actual cafe in a town/city centre?

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by balaam:
They should forget about sanitised hands and sanitise the taps. Will someone not invent a self sanitising tap?

I find those "Now wash your hands signs sometimes found in pub and work toilets odd.

Let me explain. After using the toilet and cleaning yourself and adjusting your clothing you wash your hands. But it isn't that simple:

• You turn the tap on - there is no plug for the basin so you leave it running.
• You wash your hands.
• You then touch the tap WHICH YOU LAST TOUCHED WITH YOUR SOILED HAND to turn the tap off.

How can that be hygienic?

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You turn the tap off with a bit of paper towel. This method is explicitly taught on some public "wash your hands" signs here.

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Originally posted by Lothlorien:
Practically very self respecting nursery in Sydney has a coffee shop attached. I guess it is a big money spinner as they usually sell fancy gardening goods and other bits and pieces.

Coffee is very often quite good and meals are served. Nothing fancy, just convenient. Surroundings are pleasant.

Few people down here would go to Starbucks. That is why there are few Starbucks in Sydney or Australia to actually go to. Around 90% of them were closed some years ago because of lack of patronage. Just as well too.

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Originally posted by ken:
- pretentious twat chains like Starfucks and, er, I assume there are others. Found everywhere. Customers mostly seem to be 19-year-old girls trying to look cool and wasted gay men with expensive clothes and Apple laptops. As far as I can tell they don't actually sell coffee so much as a variety of horrendously expensive mildly coffee flavoured milkshakes. I'm not completely sure as I've never been in one and never had occasion to either.

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I love it!

"I've never been in one so I know they are terrible!"

Mrs. S, mother of a Starbucks devotee aged 29

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Don't get your knickers in a twist over your advancing age. It achieves nothing and makes you walk funny.
Prayer should be our first recourse, not our last resort
'Lord, please give us patience. NOW!'

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Originally posted by orfeo:
I remember walking to meet someone at a Starbucks in New York City. I passed two other Starbucks on the way there.

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Originally posted by PeteC:
Krispy Kreme does not exist in Canada, to my knowledge. I only wish that I could say the same for *$$. An overpriced cup of burnt tasting coffee... I ignore them.

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