Victorianitas

What I was going to say here at first was that there's a teenage couple at the next table, having one of those painfully civilised pre-breakup conversations. Bit lips and eyes staring at the table, turning sugar packets into little pellets of damp, gritty mush in their hands while they talk. And I was going to say that I'm not the only person who's glanced over at them, and that there's something comforting about the silent, sympathetic "ouch" that just rippled out across the leather sofas and arty photo prints on the walls.

And then as they kept talking, I realised that wasn't what was going on at all, so I was going to write about the teenagers at the table next to me who were planning a party, or something, of some sort, and how the girl didn't want somebody else to be there, and the boy was disappointed by this, and the girl was disappointed by having to tell him. Except the way they were talking, it sounded like the idea of this being bad news was some kind of pretense, and that neither of them was all that unhappy at all.

And then it turned out that that wasn't it, either. So I was going to write something about how the boy at the next table was thinking out loud about breaking up with his girlfriend, and that his friend sitting next to him was giving him the kind of advice that sounds like it's helpful and platonic and objective, if that's what you want to hear, but isn't necessarily any of those things.

And then she hugged him and said "You should so ask Stacey out! She'd love that!" And he grunted that he didn't want to talk about Stacey.

So I have no idea what's going on at the next table, but God I miss being seventeen.