29th January 2008
I don’t remember ever feeling quite as bad as I did just before Christmas. Heartbreak and I had never really been acquainted before, at least not in the instant, feeling sick, I want to impale my stomach on those railings over there way. So I’d never believed, either, in the tale that it stopped you from eating. But it did, and now I do. I didn’t run out of porridge oats that week. When I finally went into the sandwich shop opposite work, I wasn’t greeted with “the usual?”, because I didn’t really have a usual anymore. The Book, as the Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide is known, went untouched for weeks. I briefly wondered if my only fascination with it was finding cool places to take the girl I loved.
I got hungry eventually.
I’m on my own, then, when I get to Cay Tre. I’m going to a gig in Camden, and I decided earlier in the day to walk there from Old Street. At 8pm I leave the office and think “yeah, I’ll go there” – I don’t even know its name. I’ve been for lunch once before, when it was empty. I get there and it’s full. Seemingly it’s more popular than I thought.
I stick with what I know, because you can’t go wrong with what you know, can you? It’s a large chicken pho and a beer (did someone say dry January? Oh. Fail. Again) for me then please, even though I know large is always too big. New people arrive to sit next to me – a man and a woman. They’re just friends. They ask me what I’m having when it arrives, and the man orders the same. It’s good. Mine’s too big. The large is always too big. But the noodles are good, and there’s bones in there as well as chicken – I like that, it feels like they’re in there for the flavour. I have no idea what half of this green stuff is, but it feels like it’s probably healthy, and that feels like it’s probably what I need right now. The most interesting part of the meal, though, is the conversation on to my right. They’ve got their pho and their rolls, and they’re talking about travel, oh this is dull, they’re richer and go on holiday more than me, oh we’re getting on to love life, this could be more interesting, maybe, maybe. He was seeing a girl before Christmas, and then it “petered out”. She doesn’t understand how these things peter out. He tells her, embarrassedly, that the girl he was seeing was into porn. He means, really, really into porn. He wasn’t so into that. My Steinbeck novel has been open on the same page for the past five minutes, because the embarrassment in this man’s voice is just too much to tear away from. It’s hilarious and depressing at the same time. The former because, well, from the rest of the stories he’s telling it sounds pretty funny, really. The latter because oh dear God, I’m single and it’s a bit terrifying really and I really, really don’t want to be in a cheap Vietnamese restaurant when I’m in my late thirties telling my friends about the girls I’ve let it peter out with in the past two months.
When the bill arrives they take a very long time to bring my change. My neighbours’ conversation has got to the point where if I don’t leave soon, I will cry tears of despair. And I’m out.
I’ll go again, of course. It’s near work. It’s cheap as anything. The pho’s bloody great. But maybe in the afternoon next time. Maybe when it’s not so busy.
Eating London 