oysters

I've not met many Brummies who are passionate enough about oysters to have told me about it. Nor have a met many Midlanders with a particular taste for them. I think we might have one oyster bar for the few incomers who visit the 'posh' bits of the Second City, and many of us living in Brum are people who have claimed it as our home rather than 'Brummies born and bred. I am unsure about the point at which a newcomer becomes a Brummie, but I'm not aware that we ever do. So, I can't generalise about Brummies and oysters but in my experience a Brummie, 'born and bred' or newcomer, won't talk to you about oysters, tabasco, lemon, darling...it just won't happen. An Oyster to a Brummie is first thought of as a thick slab of potato, dipped in fish batter and deep fried to a crisp, probably smothered in curry sauce. If this proves not to be the case then they will think of it as a strange type of indulgence which will cost you a packet and not fill you up. They won't judge you over it, but they won't get it either.I have heard plenty about oysters. I think I tried one once, because you have to if you grow up in the Surrey hills, you tend to bump into someone rich enough who hauled some in on their yacht. I must have loathed it because I never tried it again.
I am in a minority group of my own. A Southener from the Home Counties I rarely, thankfully, meet my own kind, although there are a couple of real Brummies who are as foodie as the best Surreyite. I turn to them for moral support at times like the one I'm about to describe.
This isn't about oysters. It is about the point at which a culture decides what is reasonable, extravagant, pointless. How do we decide to put value on something? Something like service or quality?
I realise that I have reached the grumpy old woman stage because I really am cross about this incident in the inappropriately named sandwich shop Upper Crust. By all appearances this is a simple and unremarkable incident, be warned it is doubtless that my Surrey-girl core has been re-activated by two weeks in Foodie France, where everything is 'simply divine'. You might think it ridiculous to be so upset about it.
It went like this: girl buys large slab of 'pizza slice', which isn't pizza or slice it is slab of cheap bread mix with tomato concentrate topped with soap. Girl is slight and looks like she has a small appetite. Seems reasonable when she asks 'can you please cut it in half'? So far, so ordinary. Person 'serving' agrees sullenly before being randomly summoned by her supervisor to go on a break. Person 'serving' simply mentions that she will when she has cut the so-called 'pizza slice' in half. Supervisor bites off head of person 'serving', shrieking at her that she must take a break immediately and screeching hysterically that 'we don't cut pizza slices in half' over and over again. I'd been looking for an excuse to bite someone's head off myself to be honest and maybe I was jealous. However, instead, skinny woman and me catch each others eyes (in my case she only caught one of mine thanks to hairdresser Anthony's most recent experiment with my fringe but don't get me started). I roll my one eye, she rolls both. I drop it into conversation that 'I've just been to France and there they have service' like the Surrey girl I can't help being. I get asked whether I want a drink with my 325 calorie brown bread with plastic re-hydrated ham, cheap margarine, over-ripe tomato and wilted cucumber sandwich. I want to scream 'if I wanted a drink don't you think I might have thought of that on my own', and say 'no thank you' through pursed lips instead. I wish her luck and totter off with some Hagrid sized bamboo twigs from TK Maxx and a new water jug because from now on I'm going to do it the French way and drink water with my sit-down lunch. Today of course I swallowed a sandwich on the run in one gulp, without a drink because I was too proud to admit that I wanted some water but was too mean to pay £1.75 when I could 'make it at home for nothing'.
This place, it gets under your skin.