increpare games

I was introduced to the following technique by the archcricket of Wales at a charity luncheon several years back – it can cause terrible internal consternation in the mind of the poor victim and will surely leave them on edge for the entire evening. It is primarily intended for the restaurant lunch-for-2, with a target who is sensitive to matters etiquettical, otherwise they might miss it entirely, and then where would you be?!

When you sit down with your partner at the table and are ordering, be sure to ask for a jug of water; (Oh! the other person must also be wiling to drink it elseways this will not work at all). So yes, anyway. You are to keep track of the levels of both his and your glasses of water during the meal; what you are waiting for is a time when you are just finished yours, and he is somewhere between half and two-thirds finished his.

Now, when you reach this point, you reach for the glass and fill yours to a level just slightly below the level his is at, and then you put the jug back down (Do try to make sure they notice this; but don’t point it out in some vulgar way). Then you carry on. Such an action will cause immense conflict in their refined minds as, on the one hand, you aught have topped them up, but on the other hand you seem to think such a quantity as you have poured to be sufficient for your own purposes. I am not, maybe, best able to explain the psychology of it in words directly, but I will vouch for its fantastic effectiveness.

A class of reasoning I’ve observed in heated arguments between irritable people:

Person A does something that person B doesn’t like. Person B will commonly first remark something like “What’s this mess, did *you* do this?”, before going to say something like “This mess is all *your* fault”. This leads, logically enough to them saying “It’s all *your* fault”.

Now a piece of magic occurs, and the emphasis changes, resulting in “It’s *all* your fault”. They will repeat this again, using it as one might when saying “It’s raining”, so: “It’s *ALL* your fault”. This inevitably leads them to defensive conclusions of the form of “I’ve *never* done anything wrong”, with the intended scope being absolute and universality. There is a certain ingenuity involved in this sort of reasoning, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Restaurants and mobile telephones. No person of any class or breeding will ever leave their mobile telephone active while sharing a repast with somebody in one of our city’s fine establishments; it’s one of the big etiquette no-nos.

However, those of us who like to torment are not interested in these social conventions except as a means to irk and perpetually torment those nearest and dearest to us. So let me offer a suggestion how best to capitalize on this rule:

Either before you enter the restaurant, or just when you do arrive at the said establishment, your partner should in some way discretely turn off their phone. Check for this, and when they do, make some show of sending a text message from yours, and then comment to them that you hope they will reply quickly.

Now, you should spend a good deal of the first course completely occupied with the operation of your phone, sending text messages and completely ignoring your partner, and not touching your food for the most part – this works better if they are paying, but is satisfactory by other arrangements as well. This should leave them feeling rather tired with your behaviour before they’ve even gotten to the main course. And, of course, be sure to hold the phone as follows: both elbows on table, phone, held in both hands, raised to your eye level.

Now, in the wait between courses you should send a message to a family member asking them to call you when they are free to, somebody who you expect will reply to your request within the next ten minutes. Then put your phone away, and begin to talk to them in some seemingly earnest way, apologizing profusely for your ignoring of them.

Then your phone rings (Oh, make sure that your ring-tone is truly obnoxious). Now, you do all the things that you feel might annoy him – talk loudly, say that you are in a restaurant, indeed feel free to complain about the food. Now, and this is the piece de resistance: ask the person who called you if they would like to speak to your partner, and that you are sure they would like to talk to them. Then thrust the contraption in their faces and say to them, “Here, so and so wants to talk to you”.

Works a treat.

If you’re stuck for something to try during dessert, if things get that far, I can heartily recommend a course of constant mobile-phone photograph taking. Especially if you have the anti-pervert camera shutter sound on your phone.

Given that I’ve cleared my conscience, I feel that I can offer some advice on how to torment people you are going to dinner with when it comes to the paying of gratuities.

Scenario the First:
It’s been a really good dinner. Both of you are paying for yourselves. The other person leaves a hefty tip. What you do is not only to not give any gratuity, but indeed to pay under what you actually should, so that their generous gratuity is completely nullified or, even better, reduced it to an insulting amount. If they do not notice this, let them know as soon as you have left the restaurant.

Scenario the Second:
It’s been a really good dinner. Both of you are paying for yourselves. The other person leaves a hefty tip. You say “Oh, that’s far too much of a tip”, take most of the tip-money from the tray, and put it back into your wallet.

I was going to bitch about someone else’s behaviour here; I really wanted to, I mean, really. But the heat of my fuffing was, I believe now, due largely to my own guit at a related crime I had myself perpetrated, which I will presently relate you.

Here, come sit down and let me tell you the story.

I was in Eddie Rockets, late one night, with someone towering, striped, thoroughly lovely (now also equally thoroughly pass’d).

But anyway, we had, like, two malts.

Anyway, after our sapient colloquy, we were, like, up at the counter, and were paying individually.

As I recall, I had, like, a fifty, but also, like, just twenty cent under the actual cost in change. So, when we were going up, I was, like, “can I take twenty cent from your change to pay my way?” and that was sorted.

Only it wasn’t. Because, he, having paid first, and with change in hand, I saw him tipple the coins into the tips tray by the register.

And I, I…I reached in to the tray and took out the twenty cent piece to pay the balance of my malt, didn’t tip, then walked out…

The memory I have of that action still haunts me, and I have to say the crime committed against me that I was to bitch about pales in comparison.

…mes faux pas dans la vie….