Wednesday 17th February: Eating alone

This isn't meant to be a picture of a bottle of wine (although wine does tend to feature in a lot of my pictures!), it's actually the man sat by himself in the restaurant who caught my attention.

Isn't it strange how someone sat on their own is such a rare thing. Had he been sat with someone else I probably wouldn't have noticed him.

But instead, as I tucked into my lovely curry, I was formulating all sorts of reasons for his eating alone on a Wednesday night. Was he just late from work and thought he'd grab a bite on the way home? But then why not grab something quick (he had a starter too so he was clearly not in a rush). Did he just like the restaurant/curry and treated himself? But then why not take someone with him to enjoy the experience more? Was he just a misanthropic Heathcliff, preferring his own company?

The conclusion I came up with, and it's great how your imagination just runs off with a scenario, is that he is a widow. He lives alone, he doesn't really want to head home to an empty house. He perhaps lost his wife not too long ago so the pain is still raw. Perhaps he doesn't want to dine with anyone else because he loved eating out with his wife so much that it would just be too painful to invite anyone else so soon.

Sympathy set in; I felt incredibly sorry for the man, particularly as he didn't look like he had much to smile about at the moment.

I am probably completely wrong, and I hope I am. How painful my morbid scenario would be.

Instead, I'm now going to pretend that he's a complete anti-social asshole, because that doesn't make me feel so bad and it won't, next Wednesday evening, make me think of him turning up alone at the restaurant again, recalling memories of his wife.