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That's Amore

Jeff Zycinski | 13:57 UK time, Sunday, 14 May 2006

We paid our first family visit to that Xscape place at Braehead this afternoon. The youngest Zedette had been invited to a birthday party in the indoor snow centre and the rest of us trooped along for a look-see.

It's really a massive ski-slope housed inside a giant fridge, lit by eerie fluorescent lamps. We watched from a balcony as children and adults slid around on skis, ski-boards and toboggans. The snow looked real enough but the place had the same odour as our home freezer compartment when it needs defrosting.

As our boy joined the rest of the party we took the other Zedette for a meal, telling her she could choose from any of the assorted deli-diners, pizza parlours and burger bothys available within the complex. She chose one of those places that are meant to resemble a New York Italian diner from the the Fifties. We ate to a soundtrack of Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Doris Day and we were only halfway through our meal when I noticed the same tracks coming around again. Then again. Then again.

Well of course there are some radio stations that do very good business with that kind of music policy, but it was starting to drive me crazy. I asked our waitress if constant exposure to this endless loop of nostalgic Americana was having a similar impact on her sanity. She gave me a wide-eyed and pathetic nod.

"I went to bed with the first line of Amore going round my head for hours", she confessed, '... when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie....' again and again".

I tried to offer some sympathetic words, but she wouldn't let me speak. I'd opened some kind of valve. She was now in full-flow.

"And then this morning", she continued, "I couldn't remember the name of that stupid song. It drove me crazy all over again!"

I was very generous with my tip. Well, the price of therapy these days!

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