A Bristol Novella

Tonight, two of the three courses take over an hour to reach our table. Despite a mere fourteen full tables in this thirty six tabled restaurant. And after drinking half of the bottles on the white list, it's decided, as usual that gratitude charge is defiantly null and void. And the conversation is a slur of regurgitated wine talk, largely based on bottle blurbs. As everyone is too far gone to actually think, let alone taste for them selves.

Wednesday, I am spotted having breakfast in another expensive establishment. Rather rudely I am approached, and spoken at for an awkward thirty seconds, until it's obvious that the conversation is dead. Shortly after the American waitress brings the bill. Closing my eyes, I pick a card at random and drop it into her basket.

And the rest of the week is unfortunately a blur of drawing, coffee, drawing, and expensive lunches alone. Coupled with perhaps the odd urge to make more excursions to the continent.

Tonight, having underpaid the bill, and cut the restaurant, the walk home is as equally as disappointing. The wind grazes at my face, and the spatter of the rain dampens my brown, moccasins, and the light at the crossing roses my face, and headlights race in the sky, and the dormant Christmas decorations hang, apathetically, across the street, and a man talks German into a mobile phone, and the Vodka makes my head spin, and the coffee makes me shake. And I'm left thinking. In the story of my life, on what page do I receive terrible service in a restaurant, get chatted up by a waiter in a Vodka bar, and still walk home alone? Because I really wish the editor had torn it out.