Friday, Gareth's group.

Of course, he made a point of greeting every member in a voice so loud, so fortissimo, a voice yodeling with the intent of shattering my windows and reminding me of his request...But with Helen on a day off there was no point taking the bait and, also, client A. had cancelled ( a young man who I  think of as my doomed boy such is his impossible predicament ), so as a relief from Gareth's hysterics, I took a drive to the seafront and decided to have lunch in a worker's cafe called Diana's. The moment I sat down my mistake was clear. It was a white, formica table. A communal thing. Within seconds I found myself with egg and chips, and thirty seven serviettes...( How dirty do I have to be to eat here..? With that thought, I found myself hankering for my father. He would've been at ease here and, therefore, so would I...). No matter, I was eating with Roger, Pete and the Polish, Maxim. I knew all their names because of the badges pinned to their donkey jackets. All of them, to a man, worked at the gas plant up the road. Or the timber yard. I couldn't be sure. With a crabbed finger, I pulled over the house copy of The Sun. I haven't read this paper for nearly thirty seven years, but my interest now was not an attempt to ingratiate myself with Roger, Pete, and Maxim. No, by the time I was holding the paper in my hands, settling and re-settling myself in the chair,  I was set with a genuine curiosity to see the girl on Page 3. It was Debbie, 19, from Preston, and she was, let's be clear, lovely. It was only when running low on chips that I sensed Debbie was also a girl in some need of cash for a first deposit on a flat to be shared with a man that, to be fair, she wasn't sure about. I closed the paper and returned it to the centre of the table. Within seconds, Roger had nabbed the paper and was appraising himself of Debbie's situation. And so it was, I leaned over to gulp the last of my Breakfast tea, and to go. Instead, as if someone had hit me in the belly, I took an aborted sip and felt an enormous, transcendent pity for myself, Roger, Peter, and the Polish Maxim because, of course, where once all of us would have enjoyed the pleasures of Breast worship on a hillside in Athens with thousands of others, or would have spent days in rapturous celebration of the divinity of the Breast in Egyptian or Canaanite ceremonies instead, here we were shuffling, in silence, a paper image on a formica table. And with that, I nodded, and took my leave.