things move around

I dined in the hotel, on pea soup and cod. The pea soup was from a tin, which is a guarantee of relative quality in this kind of place. I was sitting in an open booth under a wan green light, so my soup appeared colourless and gruelish, but there was something in it like ham which I relished. In the booth behind me sat a man, Mr Clegg, who seemed to be some sort of resident from the way the waitress addressed him by name and seemed to give him a big discount on his steak; he sang along, from time to time, with the local shanties piping out of the speakers: “The Schooner Mary Ann” and others.

Then the CD ended and for a time I ate in near-silence, the sole diner, the staff off somewhere. The only sound was the intermittent jingling of the fruit machines at the other end of the bar. I clung onto sanity long enough for the waitress to return and fire up the shanties again; and now it was her turn to sing along quietly as she shuffled around behind the bar.

The cod wasn’t fresh but it was okay, “pan-fried” with minimal batter. Among the carrots and peppers was a solitary floret of broccoli which I saved ’til last.

As I was leaving, two unpleasant-looking men came in, sat down in the booth ahead of me, and ordered unpleasant-sounding dinners. I was unnerved by the elder man in particular, who struck me as a source of malice, and this made me bang my knee on the table as I shuffled off my bench and limped back to my room.