A personal quirk of mine is preferring always to eat at the bar of a restaurant. Too many places – and especially too many popular places – treat the dining section as a reborn steerage class. Case in point – last night we’re sitting at a two person table with maybe 15 inches of clearance against the next table. Their waiter arrives and is announcing the specials as he opens the wine they’ve ordered – only the limited gap means his elbow is spilling into my space and I have nearly a minute of bobbing and weaving as he uncorks the thing. As I shadow box I come up with a term for this problem – oinodoulooignophobia:
oinodoulos – Greek for wine slave and even though the dictionary contains no entry I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere.
oignumi – Greek for open (and the word in Homer for unsealing a krater of wine).
Extracts 