I was in town doing some shopping, but had quite a few hours to kill as I was going to see Sarah Kendall at the Soho Theatre at 9.30 (v good), so I popped into Borders on Charing Cross Road to have a drink in the Starbucks there.
I ordered a fruit drink and a piece of skinny carrot cake and then tried to find somewhere to sit. The seated area was jam packed with people - it often is as people enjoy having a coffee and reading their books, or even reading books that they haven't yet bought to see if they want to buy them. I got all the way to the back and the only space I could find were two empty seats next to a man sitting alone at a table. One of them had some of his stuff on it, but the other seemed to be free.
"Is anyone sitting here?" I asked, hoping he wouldn't launch into a Ben Elton style routine about why we say that when there clearly isn't, because then I'd have to launch into a Stewart Lee style routine about why the reason we say that is because a person might be sitting there, but has just popped to the loo or whatever.
The man looked at me and paused for just a moment to long as he said, "Yes, I am afraid so, sorry."
He was lying. I knew he was lying. He was aware that I suspected his veracity. I looked at the empty chairs and at him and I didn't move away straight away. There was literally nowhere else to sit in the cafe and yet this man was hogging these two empty seats because he wanted a table to himself.
I stayed where I was, looking round the cafe, making it clear that these two seats were my only option. I wish I had said, "Well I am going to have to sit here for the moment. I will get up when your obviously real two friends arrive."
But I lacked the Macsquirter Twins to do this and instead shuffled around for a bit with my juice and my cake in my hands. Finally someone left a table on the opposite side of the seating area and I saw my opportunity and sat down.
But I was interested to see when this man's two friends would arrive and whether he needed to protect their seats quite so fastidiously. Would I get my drink and my cake eaten by the time they got here?
I wasn't in any hurry and I sat and read the second Jonathan Ames book that Stewart Lee had given me. I had everything I needed. I was prepared to wait.
A few minutes later a young woman asked the man if anyone was sitting in the seats. I looked up from my book to see what he would do. He said that there was, but added that they might be a while, so she could sit there for a bit. I stared at him incredulously. He noticed me looking and looked away, blanching a little. Oh, he didn't mind a pretty girl sharing his table, but not a chubby man. I hated him about as much as I could hate anyone I had only exchanged ten words with.
I let it go. I am a big man and I was not going to give him the satisfaction of punching him in the face. But next time I looked up from my book, some twenty minutes after I had talked to him, the girl was gone and he was still sitting alone at the table. The cafe was still bustling and full, but he had now gone to the trouble of putting a shopping basket of books on the other one. He had been caught out before, but now he was protecting his territory, even though people were looking for seats and even though his two real friends were clearly not in any rush to join him.
Another thirty minutes passed. My drink and cake were gone, but I was enjoying my book and also increasingly determined to stay where I was until this man's friends turned up. But still, an hour in now, there was not a hint that they were coming. At one point the man had spoken on a mobile phone, but I suspect this was just a ruse to make it appear that he was checking on his tardy chums. But even if the people were real (which they obviously weren't) then it was still ridiculously selfish for him to be hogging this table, whilst others were forced to drink standing up, or form the occasional spare chairs into a circle and sit without a table. How long would he keep this up? How long would I stay to watch?
I shot the man the occasional hard stare. I was pointedly trying to convey to him the fact that I had noticed his friends still hadn't turned up. I wasn't sure by now if he would remember who I was - so much time had gone by - and he mainly managed to avoid my increasingly aggressive stare.
I really should have got up and got on with my life, but this was becoming a point of principle for me now. I wanted to see the friends. I wanted to prove that the man had been lying. I wanted to challenge him on his selfishness.
Another half an hour went by and I got caught up in my book, and when I looked up the chairs were all empty. Damn, I had missed the opportunity. He had been lying, but he had sneaked off and avoided the confrontation. But then I spotted his bags still in the chairs. He was saving the seats even when he wasn't there himself. He came back moments later with another coffee. I still had the chance to berate him.
Two hours into this stake out I began to question myself as much as him. What kind of a person was I that I was prepared to give up my own Saturday afternoon to try and prove the inconsideration of another? Wasn't this crazy? And weren't things by now building up to the point where violence might ensue? This was quite an aggressive thing to be doing. To be sitting, waiting, occasionally staring. What was I going to do when the man genuinely started leaving? Wouldn't I look insane for having hung around for so long just to make a point? What if the man was the kind of person who was looking for a fight? What if he hit me in the face?
I couldn't work out what I was going to do. I was already aware that I would write about this in Warming Up, but if that was the case then I felt I had to challenge him at some point. But if I challenged him what would it say about me and what events might it set into motion?
Jonathan Ames wouldn't have sat back and not got involved, but my natural reticence and shyness and cowardice meant that I was really in two minds about what would happen. Part of me really wanted to find out how he would defend himself, but part of me wanted my face not to be caved in.
I had now drunk a bottle of diet coke that had been in my bag and was starting to really need a wee. Plus it was getting on for dinner time and the stand off was still continuing.
I finally concluded that I was being as much of an idiot as this man (and also taking up a seat that could be used by a paying customer myself - though it's amazing how many people stay in this cafe for hours of the afternoon). I needed the toilet and I needed to go and eat so I could get to the gig.
But still I wanted to say something. I went and hung around by the stationery department, right by his table. I kept looking at him, hoping he would catch my eye and remember me as the man he had slighted almost an eighth of a day ago. I wanted to go up to him and say, "I've finished now. I reckon I could probably have sat in that seat you've been saving after all. I should have explained that I'd only be wanting the seat for three hours. It's my own fault."
But self-preservation and the desire to appear sane (when clearly this entry demonstrates that I am not) got the better of me. I went to the toilet and went on my way. I couldn't get over the feeling that he has won.
