Keep your fingers crossed.

The bitch from hell is back in the building and turning the place over with a fine tooth comb; I am talking of course about the local environmental health inspector, who hates us with a vengeance. This is her fourth visit since closing the café down for seriously stupid reasons.

Without doubt she is looking for something, anything she can get us on. Last time it was because the microwave was finished in white enamel and not stainless steel. That was it, she couldn’t find anything else wrong other than that, she eventually got everybody’s back up on purpose so that she could report that our staff were unhelpful and a hindrance to the commission of her inspection. A new microwave was bought the next day and installed, but it was several weeks before we could officially open again such was the rat’s nest of red tape that she had embroiled us in with the powers that be.

You might think I am being cruel to someone who after all is just doing their job, but if you were to meet this harridan, you would see exactly why I used the term bitch. She wears a permanent sneer, is arrogant, patronising and sarcastic in the extreme.

Like most businesses we cut corners on occasion, but never where aspects of safety are concerned, its more than our business is worth and because of that we have educated ourselves in this respect, to the point of law in fact. That’s how we know she picks at things that are unpickable, still she is back for another stab and as I write she is crawling round the kitchen area of the café with a bleeding magnifying glass in one hand and a CSI type kit in the other.

I’m not a betting man but on this occasion I have chanced a fiver with a colleague that she will get us on something.