I'm sat having a late lunch with a friend in a popular Tunbridge Wells cafe. The cafe is known for its cakes, its hearty salads and its quiches. The menu is small, locally produced and fresh. We are enjoying our lunch immensely when two middle-aged women enter the cafe, one of them pushing a buggy containing a lively baby girl. The lunchtime rush is over, so they decide to sit at the table in the middle of the room and park the buggy across the walkway, blocking access to two tables and the kitchen hatch. The staff politely suggest they move to a corner table where there is room for the buggy. Rather than follow this suggestion, they opt for the table next to ours. The large buggy won't fit in the space between the counter and my friend's back. After a few shoves, my friend, deep in appreciation of her soup and salad, realises the woman is trying to get through, apologises, and moves her chair. It is not enough. She gets up. It is not enough. She lifts the chair out of the way and the woman pushes through, a thin smile that does not reach her eyes is the only thanks she gives.She parks the buggy in the middle of the space, blocking access to three different tables. There is then the hugely bothersome task of getting a high chair for the baby, and finally, she almost sits down, but not before demanding that I move my bag of shopping and handbag that is next to my chair, so she can sit sideways on her chair, rather than at the table. The back of her chair now touches my ribs, making eating a challenge, but she is too absorbed in her next drama to notice.
The other woman, who has until now been silent, begins to look at the menu and complain. The waitress comes to take the order and questions that seem to cause the questioner physical pain spill from her mouth like bitter seeds of discontent. Do they have any cake that's sugar-free, and gluten-free? Because she's on a restricted diet and can't have sugar, dairy, gluten, legumes, peppers, tomatoes, margarine, butter, olive oil, crude oil, bath bombs, eggshells, foie gras, borsch, roast hedgehog, and a thousand other things you might reasonably expect to find in a cafe and cake shop. The questions go on and on. The waitress suggests there may be some avocado left from the breakfast menu. No. She doesn't like avocado. The waitress suggests the salads, the soup, a sandwich on gluten-free bread, but each is rejected in turn for containing an offending food. The waitress patiently and pleasantly persists, but everything is rejected until, with a huge sigh, the woman bravely suggests some eggs and maybe some ham. But all todays eggs have gone at breakfast, so instead, she orders a panini with ham and cheese without a hint of embarrassment. Not gluten-free, or dairy-free, not even butter-free. Just self-awareness free.
I want to punch her on behalf of the waitress. I want to punch her friend on behalf of myself. But her friend won't keep still, she's up and down fussing over her grandchild, whose oblivion to this spectacle I envy. We finish our lunch and leave them there, eating their sandwiches, stewing in their self-righteous, middle-class, Tunbridge Wells privilege. But I see them, I see two unhappy women trying to exercise control over others, validating themselves, passive aggressively expressing the pain of being them. Compassion eludes me today. Right now, I just hate them and hope their lunch leaves them bloated.
