I would like to lodge a complaint. Indeed, I am writing on behalf of everyone who has been to a restaurant for a special evening out, has struggled to understand the pretentious descriptions on the menu, has gasped at the cost of things and had a thoroughly unhappy dining experience. Though recent columns may suggest otherwise, I don't get to eat out all that often. So when a guest from Rick Stein country arrived the other night, I thought I'd better push the (fishing) boat out. I'll skip the pleasantries - since the staff did too - and move on to the meal itself. Apart from the fact that the dining room was so dark and sombre I felt I was at a funeral breakfast, the menu was so fancy and cloaked in such OTT terms that I honestly didn't have a clue what I was ordering. Finally, I selected the simplest things I could find - a salad for starters, fish for main. It came titivated, of course - what I could see of it in the dark - and tasted good. But when you're not a connoisseur then it's hard to wax lyrical over a piece of fish. My two companions enjoyed their fishy meals too and one of them then went on to have dessert - cheesecake and ice cream, arranged like a sculpture with such artistic flair it was almost a shame to eat it. Still, when something costs £9.50 you do feel compelled to eat it up! We had coffee to end (a cafetiere for three
£11.85). I had to go into the light of the porch to even read the bill, and if I told you what it was (and that's with just two glasses of wine and a bottle of water) you'd feel as heavy hearted and cheated as I did. I have no doubt that The Journal's food writer Bill Oldfield (and no, Bill, it wasn't your restaurant) will have something to say about why food in noted restaurants costs as much as it does. And you might say I was out of my depth, that I shouldn't have chosen such a posh place when there are many other cheaper, less formal places to eat in our region where the ambience would have been cheery and warm, the menu straightforward and the staff more welcoming and communicative. You might ask too if I complained on the night. Of what? The dark? The boring background music? The gloomy surroundings and lack of atmosphere? After all, the food was okay - it was my perception of how a special night out should be that wasn't. Just because the average price of a house now is £134,000 does that mean the average price of a starter in a decent restaurant should be £12? Or have we fallen into the Emperor's New Clothes trap to mange tout and pay up with relish? Not me. As they may say in the best fish restaurants, I know my plaice. A fool in Las Vegas One couldn't be anything other than delighted for Winlaton gran Marion Richardson who spent £1.50 on a Euro lottery ticket, had an itchy palm and won nearly £17m this week. But it was hard to feel the same delight for 32-year-old Ashley Revell from Kent who sold everything he owned to gamble on the spin of a roulette wheel in Las Vegas. Granted he doubled his money from his £76,500 stake when Red Number 7 came up, but to praise his nerves of steel, his bravery and his plucky decision is to make a mockery of this week's report that we are on the brink of an addiction explosion in this country - not to mention the soldiers out in Iraq. What is brave about staking every last bean in a casino? What kind of message does that send out to the kids who will beg, borrow and steal to fund their addiction to the slot machines in arcades up and down the country? They are never going to quit now because they have, according to the admiring Americans, a hero - a Brit with true grit. The one saving grace in Mr Revell's foolhardiness is that he's a single man so no wife had to sit back and let him gamble their house and all their possessions away. That little honour fell to his parents who went to watch the spectacle - and were apparently prepared to help him pick up the pieces if it all went wrong. Still, a fool and his money are soon parted, they say. So we can only surmise that it won't last long. Let's make more of the bridge Whatever time of day or night you go down, you are bound to find people walking across our esteemed Millennium Bridge. So can I please urge someone to take the bull by the horns and do something to capitalise on the tourists who are desperate to take home a proper souvenir of their little walk? There is no little kiosk selling postcards, no easily accessible interactive display showing how the bridge was built and how it works, no-one on hand to suggest a group photograph on the bridge with the bridges in the background, which could then be ready to show on a computer screen by the time the bridge had been crossed. If they can do it on the London Eye and at Alton Towers, surely they could manage it on Tyneside? Why not go the whole hog and have a guide or two on hand - free of charge. And though I know I've mentioned it before, could we please have a little wishing well somewhere in the middle so that people of all ages could make a romantic wish and help local charities too. Plastic tumblers drive us from drink Reports that the NHS is to give hospital patients, especially the elderly, its own brand of bottled mineral water to encourage them to drink more have yet to be confirmed. Well, it might work for young people already used to drinking out of the bottle but for older folk it will certainly be a no-no. Someone should tell the hospitals, it's those horrible plastic tumblers and jugs that put people off, not the water itself. Fix those - and it's a whole different story. Gazza should get that match I loved The Journal's picture of Gazza imitating the Jonny Wilkinson drop kick at the big charity match at the Falcons' Kingston Park ground on Monday - mainly because of the crowd behind him, laughing as one. No-one, except maybe Peter Beardsley, has the power to generate so much benevolence and goodwill on his home patch just by turning up and being himself. So now he's reportedly decided to give up on his football, I hope it's not too long before he gets the testimonial match he yearns for at St James's Park. It would certainly be a case of "aal the lads and lasses there, aal w' smilin' faces
" ********** What goes up must come down, they say. But only in the North-East could we have the tale of Susanne Pitt, alias Lily Von Frauenau, getting permission to open a dungeon in Swalwell
ABOVE a pizza parlour. ********** Hilarious. The grainy black and white episode of The Likely Lads shown over Easter nearly 40 years after it was made. Funniest of all was Bob buying a round of drinks in a country pub at an astronomical 19s 3d. "'How much is that?" inquired my eldest, collapsing in a heap when I told him it was nearly a pound. Old money? I felt very old indeed. | 
