Re: Buying time

"RJM" <scratch.pad@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I was in Clapham, meeting a friend for lunch. I don't know
if you're familiar with Clapham. It's frightfully smart these days.
My friend and I strolled up from her house on the north side
of the common to the little Trattoria by the clocktower. Our table
upstairs overlooked the High Street. Busy shoppers bustled,
gaggles of girls giggled, a cab decanted a couple in fancy dress
outside the restaurant. It wasn't until Luigi showed them to a
table opposite us that we realized they weren't in fancy dress at
all. They were American.

They ordered. My friend and I could barely contain ourselves.
When a waiter brought their first course he caught our eye.
He did that little shrug with the eyes half closing for a second
and left them to their prawn cocktails.

We're both dieting but we couldn't help it. We ordered dessert.
It was too funny, watching the Americas eat. They did that
cutting up thing, holding their forks in their fists, slicing their meal
into mouthfulls, changing hands and raising food, oops, much
too big, putting it down, trimming a bit, trying again all with that
delicious fastidiousness that they imagined was refinement. I
nearly fell off my chair when Colonel Sanders pulled his napkin
out of his collar and neatly folded it.

It was too much, we had to leave. Jeannie wrapped up broken
bread to feed the ducks, I chose a cigar from Luigi's box. I
signed and we left for a walk around the boating lake. Only in
Clapham Common, eh.

Tell Luigi to keep her knees together.

--
Subtlety written subtly can be subtly edited away.
.