Lunch

A caf. One of those cafs where people go to eat alone, fast. Not fancy lunches with ciabatta bread, fine lettuce and cheese from abroad. A greasy spoon, with formaica tables that are attached to the chairs, with tea stirred with iron girders, everything with chips, and customers that ask the waitress to hold the salad. Builders in dirty shoes, old ladies of Walworth, old men with nothing to do, pramface girlmums and their mothers. All the lone eaters sat on the same side of their tables - looking out onto the autumn sunlit street. Occassionally flicking through the paper - the kind that carries topless pictures on the third page. A man came in and sat down on the next door table to a lone woman. Bucking the trend, he sat facing her across two tables. It felt oddly inappropriately intimate. He ordered plaice and chips with peas. And tea, with lots of sugar. She had to think about not staring at him when she surveyed the scene, looked out of the window.