For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

“Sorry,” I said to the waitress, “I also ordered a drink.”.

My soup and sandwich had been brought to our table but not the drink I’d ordered too.

“You can get that from the counter,” she said without smiling, turned her back and left.

I’m the cafe at our local Morrisons. They have a computer screen on a wall to order your lunch. You select what you want, pick up a number from a small box beside the screen, tell the machine what number you’ve taken and everything is then brought to the table. Except my drink.

And this is meant to be an improvement on staff taking your order.

Which, if the staff, were anything like our waitress, then, yes, it probably was as she was acting like she ran out of smiles in 2024 and was still waiting for a new delivery.

Today, for lunch, I’m still on holiday and my mum had some messages to run. She suggests we get a bite to ear when we’re at the supermarket and that how I end up with a cheese toastie. Just not the cheese toastie I ordered. (Or my drink).

I order a brie and cranberry toastie.

“We don’t have cranberry,” says the waitress after she comes out of the kitchen, after receiving my order.

“You can have ham.”

So, I have ham. And another cheese because they didn’t have brie either, but she didn’t tell me that.

But at least they had my drink – even though I had to get that myself.

Bread: edible

Filling: unspecified cheese and ham.

Taste: it was made with all the warmth, love and care of someone whose dog had just been put down.