Eat

Dining alone

This confession may just be enough to ensure my friends delete my phone number, scrub my emails, ignore all future party invitations. But here goes: my name is Margaret, and sometimes I go to restaurants alone. I really do: I sit there, singularly, and I actually enjoy it.

I used to watch lone diners, stuck in awkward corners, staring out into conversationless space. I used to piously feel sympathy while smiling generously at those lost souls, but, if I’m honest, only while engulfed in my own deep seam of self-satisfaction - look, I have a dining partner and you don’t. Rather than ever dine alone myself - the embarrassment - I was far more likely to eat a sandwich in a hotel room than risk mortification of a menu presented to me, publicly, alone.

But I’ve got liberated. Thanks to a friend who found himself in bed when he should have been meeting me for breakfast in the Wolseley, I was forced into a solo dining experience. Rather than mourn the death of his alarm clock, instead I rather enjoyed a guiltless feast –I would probably not have sampled four courses had anyone been sitting opposite, counting. I surreptitiously overheard other conversations, finished a novel I was reading, drank all the coffee slowly, used excessive butter on my toast and - bliss - collected, rather than condensed, my thoughts. This was astonishing progress for such an early hour.

Seated alone, I felt organised, mature and dignified: rare feats, as my mornings are usually spent locating socks for the children and matching shoes for me. Such was the exquisite peace that subsequently I revisited alone for dinner, and the staff treated me like a normal social variant and not a dangerous, friendless cast off. My table was central, the attitude uncondescending, and the wine was all mine. My solo dining confidence has since increased. I can forgive the - apparently - universally limited choices in half bottles of wine. The only real problem is remembering when to leave. Dining companions usually help keep me to time; most waiters are far too polite to do the same.