I don’t consider myself to be particularly naïve or innocent, but I confess that this lunchtime, I was shocked.
Let’s do some background… there is a bunch of commuters on my train every morning, they travel from somewhere beyond my stop and are comfortably ensconced by the time the commuters from my stop scramble onto the train to grab a seat. This group travel together every day and still find enough to engage themselves in conversation throughout the fifty minute journey. Every day. I have been known to resort to the iPod to drown out their prattle.
Today, I was enjoying a drink at lunchtime with a friend in the ‘Hung Drawn and Quartered’ pub near Tower Hill when one of this aforementioned group of commuters came in.
She’s mid forties I guess, I didn’t recognise him.
They sat at a table and started to review the menu before heading downstairs to the basement toilets.
“Big mistake,” I observed to my friend, “this place is filling up, they’re likely to lose that table.”
Which indeed they did.
Not that they were bothered at losing the table. I didn’t see whether he came back upstairs first, but she reappeared some twenty minutes later, wearing sunglasses, and immediately left the pub.
I suspect he came first.
Well, at least its not happening on the train ride in!