There is an Indian restaurant in Chelmsford called Zanzibar. Zanzibar is an island off the coast of Africa, not India. That should have made me dubious to start with.

Nonetheless, I booked a table for five there yesterday afternoon, for lunchtime today, and at our appointed time we mooched down to celebrate dad’s birthday.

It was deserted.

There were two old people there when we arrived, in a place the size of a nightclub (which indeed it once was, and it still has the glitter-ball credentials to prove it) and when they had gone, we were all alone, our conversations echoing off the tastefully painted walls.

To give it its due, apart from the dirty table cloths and the face towels that were so hot it was clear they had been freshly plucked from the core of a nuclear reactor (and Sal’s had some well-cooked Sag Aloo in the middle of it, in spite of the fact it was in a hermetically sealed condom-like wrapper), it was actually very good, and the food was excellent.

The service was pretty good, too, but then as we were outnumbered about two-to-one it was difficult for it to be any other way.

I can’t see it lasting if it’s always like that, which will be a shame (the dodgy purple exterior aside). Perhaps they ought to change the name to something more authentically Indian.

Or stop handing out towels that melt your fingers into webs.

That was something of a highlight as far as today goes. The trouble with dad’s trips over is that they are always at the foulest times of the year - November, December and February. If he came in July we could go to the beach, or for a long walk somewhere, but as it is we always end up retreating to mine, feeling fat and uncomfortable, and then either play a game or flop around in front of the telly for the rest of the day.

Sadly, I couldn’t tempt anyone with the delights of Rummikub so we ended up doing the telly option, and plodded our way through Donnie Darko again on account of the fact that only two of the five of us had seen it.

I still don’t understand it.

I thought I’d got it at one point, and even drew a timeline to try and get it totally clear, but that still doesn’t explain who Frank is, or why Donnie sees him.

My new theory is that nothing after the point where the engine first falls through the roof actually happened.

Ach, well. I’ll be seeing it again next weekend with Mark and Ja (which makes this afternoon’s repeat viewing poorly timed). Mark’s far better than me at spotting cinematic sub-plots, so with any luck he’ll give me a running commentary, even on his first viewing.

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