I’ve always liked Pizza Express. They do tasty pizza with many choices; the service is usually good and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. But I also like them for another reason. Years ago, I hosted my first international exchange. We were to receive 30 young people and adults from what was then Czechoslovakia. The country then was behind the Iron Curtain and our visit there in a London school bus is for another blog but when it came time for us to host, money was tight.
I thought what am I going to do to feed them? I can’t afford restaurants for so many and for a week – and I can hardly give them sandwiches all the time. So I wrote to all the chain restaurants. I also wrote to several well-known theatre people explaining what I was doing. Almost immediately Pizza Express came back to me and enclosed a huge wadge of vouchers. I was delighted. Some of the theatre people also sent money. A west-end theatre gave us some free tickets to see a musical version of Sherlock Holmes. I was very lucky.
I met the group at Dover and took them in their coach to nearby Folkestone where I had arranged a traditional meal of fish and chips and a cup of tea. The differences between our cultures quickly emerged as it transpired that none of them liked having milk with their tea, found batter not to their liking and ended up having just water and chips. Not a great beginning. But they cheered up immediately when we went to the beach and they went swimming in the sea – which was a big deal for them because their country is landlocked.
We had a lot of adventures over the week and somehow survived two complete closures of the tube network – the roads were clogged with slow-moving cars. A highlight for the adults was that I was able to arrange a visit to the House of Commons where the mayor of the town went the wrong way by mistake and was told off by a very officious official. I said to him, “Did you know this man is the mayor of a town in Eastern Europe?”
”I can’t help that,” he said, “nobody told me.” We smoothed things over and then went over the bridge to the South Bank where the head of the Inner London Education Authority gave them all a dinner overlooking the Houses of Parliament before heading off to watch the performance of their young people.
Friendships were made and it was getting near the end of their visit when we went to Pizza Express. The staff didn’t know who we were but accepted the vouchers and served us so well. I was proud of what my country could do to make people feel at home. When I visit a Pizza Express today (and my daughter loves the Bambinoccino) I never forget that time when they helped me out and made a difference.
