Let Me Eat Cake!

This evening Charles and I joined his friend Madge for a concert in St George’s, Hanover Square. The music itself was unremarkable – nice enough, but not really worth travelling into London for – and I spent the evening fidgeting about on my hard pew to try and ease my throbbing backache, and wondering how soon the concert would be over so that we could go home. (Being the strange person that I am, however, I was also pleased to be there because I felt very cultured spending my evening listening to classical music in a church. Work that one out!)

My tummy was rumbling when we came out and I had the happy idea of saying goodbye to Madge and settling down at a nice, cosy table in a dark restaurant corner to canoodle romantically with Charles over coffee and cake before going home. A nice way to end a civilised evening, I felt. Unfortunately I didn’t communicate this very well to Charles.

“Is there somewhere near here that we could get something to eat?” I whispered invitingly into his ear.

“Yes, sure!” he said, looking pleased – then invited Madge along to eat as well. I suppose I should have expected that one, it’s only polite. But suddenly they were discussing entire meals rather than snack-ettes of cake:

“Do you fancy a curry?” Charles asked me.

“Um – god no!” I wanted a ten minute canoodle then home to bed, not an hour’s solid eating followed by rushing to catch the last train.

“What about a pizza?”

“No, not really!”

Giving up on me he looked at Madge. “Hey, I know a place that does good pitta breads and it’s really cheap too, shall we go there?”

“Sure!” she said… and I suddenly found myself being trotted halfway across London, up dark roads and down dingy alleyways to the bright lights and sleaze of late night Soho. Charles and Madge walked along chatting to each other and I brought up the rear, thinking, “Eh? Where we going? Where’s my cake? SOHO?!!”

Eventually Charles led us into a kind of MacDonalds-with-pitta bread place. All I can say is – dear god! The place was a post-pub Yob Land, packed with groups of drunken people milling about in search of a kebab. It was brightly lit by fluorescent strip lighting, the wipe-clean, plastic tables were all crammed together so tightly that once you managed to squash yourself into a seat you were pinned there indefinitely until the person behind you decided to move their chair, and the place had a grotty, take-away feel to it. As a bloke drunkenly dropped his coast on my head, my cosy vision of romance and cake floated away into the night like a pretty and unobtainable bubble, and burst into nothingness with a pathetically small pop. This place wasn’t at all what I had in mind – no canoodling, no nice atmosphere – and no cake! I really must learn that Charles doesn’t do telepathy and that I need to spell things out for him!

Last week, when Charles had visited this very place with another friend, he had been full of moans about what an awful, sleazy place his friend had taken him to. But now he was obviously having a change of heart because he eagerly tried to convince me how good the place was. Or maybe he was just hungry.

“It’s really cheap!” he said, “and look how much food you get for your money. And you can go back and fill up your pitta bread as often as you like – for free!”

Hmm, yes, because of course I’d want three extra helpings of crap!

Looking around the café… restaurant… eaterie – whatever you want to call it – I thought I’m obviously missing something. Charles liked this place (at least, this week he did), so did Madge, and so did his other friend last week. So, apparently, did all the drunk people. But I could honestly think of no reason to ever come near the place except for sheer starvation of Ethiopian proportions. And even then I’d rather eat my handbag.

I think I must just be a snob (although I prefer to call myself ‘someone with taste’!).