GPK

Tonight I collected Ella from nursery and took her to GPK in Kingsford (Gourmet Pizza Kitchen) for tea.

GPK is a chain of five pizza restaurants in Sydney and comes recommended in my Sydney for Under Fives book because of apparently brilliant customer service if you've got kids. I'd already done a drive-by reccie to check out the parking in daylight; it looked halogen-slick, so tonight I was armed with a hungry toddler and very, very dangerous.

Anyway, GPK turns out to be nothing like the standard of pizza chain I've come to expect in Britain, but then after seven months on a continent where you can't even buy fruit pastilles, I'm no longer surpised when things turn out half-arsed (or half-baked in the case of a pizza restaurant).

There were already thirty people seated when we arrived, mostly parents and kids but there were actually some normal folk as well, you know, civilians who presumably enjoy eating in the sort of racket you'd expect in a junior school canteen at lunchtime. Each to their own. The manager was on duty with one waitress, who sat us in the window to make the place appear busier.

The menu was okay (though just lots of variation on, well, pizza, unlike in Pizza Express, where they at least try to offer something else) and they even brought Ella some pizza dough to play with while she waited, which made her gag, as you might have expected.

And then they brought the pizza, steaming hot child-sized pizza, hot enough to take the skin off the roof of your mouth, so she sat looking at it and crying because she wanted it but it was too hot and I had to do the emergency pizza procedure where you separate the topping from the base and blow furiously, all the while your elbows lying unwittingly in your mozzarella.

And just as I was wiping the grease off my shirt sleeve this man walks in off the street in a long raincoat and comes straight up to our table asking me whether I'm Greek.

"Sorry?" I said

"Greek....mumble, mumble, hotel, across the road, mumble, reception"

Just as he said "reception" and I was looking at him with a deeply furrowed brow, Ella bit her finger and started howling in shock and pain and this man continued to talk to me as though nothing was happening.

I got up from my chair and moved to comfort Ella but he was blocking my path. Ella continued to howl, huge tears streaming down her face.

"My daughter's crying" I said. He continued to talk at me about being Greek, not even acknowledging there was a child.

"My daughter's crying"

"MOVE! My daughter is crying, I can't even get near her because you're standing in my way - just SHIFT!"

And with that he left the restaurant and walked back up the street, not even bothering to close the conversation or take a backwards glance. The manager saw what had happened and came over to check we were okay, which was a bit late in the circumstances. When the bill came, he'd waved the charge for Ella's pizza and ice-cream (the ice-cream he left on the food counter for so long I had to go and collect it myself and find a spoon). A free dinner for our inconvenience, he said.

I told Darren about it later.

"You're a weirdo magnet" he said. "You attract them. You've been doing it for years". I have friends all over the UK reading my blog. Which ones is he talking about?