We enjoyed this recent letter about noisy dining from one of our clients, Michael Colston:

In your latest newsletter, you ask for stories about noisy dining. I offer the following:

Many years ago a Texan friend took me to a real, hundred percent cowboy restaurant in the outback of Texas. There were perhaps 200 diners and as you would expect in that situation I was the only man not wearing a hat (Stetson) at the dinner table. The blare of pop music was unbearable. One of the diners asked the waitress to switch off the loudspeaker. She refused saying it was company policy to have music and most people enjoyed it. I doubt that, said the Texan and he wandered round several tables and everybody said they would like the music switched off. So he asked the waitress once more to switch the music off and after a heated argument she refused and walked away.

With that, the Texan calmly drew his revolver and shot the loudspeaker. There was a small shower of plaster and the other diners just looked round for a moment to see what was up, and then continued eating their meal. Evidently that event was not remarkable in that part of the world!

Regards

Michael Colston