remote cards

The staff take their breaks in the gardens. A coffee and a book, with his feet up. When I arrive it’s a guy, highlighting key sections of that books. When I have my dinner it’s a girl with curly hair and red framed glasses. Beneath the table she has an Obama bag, fist pumping victory. She eats a salad, then reads a floppy book, makes a phone call, receives congratulations from one of the other girls who stops by between clearing tables. When I talk to you on the phone its an American girl. She complains on the phone how they have too much staff, how she has to keep taking breaks. She leaves through pages of a magazine. She drinks coffee, while explaining she has a change of clothes, she will buy booze on the way to the party. Then someone else she tells about missing family and how hard it is to be so far away. We chat and laugh till my phone goes dead. So I go back to reading my book, drinking a cold drink.

Labels: dinner, glasgow, hidden gardens, staff, tramway

At the bar, ordering food. The waitress is a tiny girl. We are going through the stages of the order. She taps them into the till. One of the bar men comes to the taps beside her. He is much taller than she is. He pulls at one of the levers. There is a shower of liquid. He jumps back. She gets doused in spray. I don’t think its supposed to do that, she says. He laughs, wanders away. As we finish the order she asks if I got sprayed as well. I think you got the worst of it, I tell her. I pay, she gives me change, receipt. I go back to table.

Sitting at table. I realise with the distraction she didn’t give me the drinks. So I have to go back again. The guy is still laughing as he wanders about behind the bar. She is serving other people, who are lining up. I figure it makes sense to try and get served by her. Saves hassle. But its taking a while. Eventually the guy asks if he can help. So I tell him, and he double checks with her, calling - did you give this guy his drinks? Oh, sorry, she gushes. No problem, I tell her. And he sorts me out.

Labels: dinner, drinks, glasgow, splash, waitress

Ah, gala dinners.
The man on my left is a genetic scientist who, of course, knows my boss. The many years of drinking and plotting to write a book together! Which topic? "Oh, we've long since forgotten." The man on my right is a gay hypnotherapist, who also owns a shop for opera tickets and deals in antiques: flamboyant, wealthy, utterly without ambition.
The man on my left and the man on my right know each other, of course, from an infamous dinner party at a mutual friend. The drunken shenanigans long past!
The wife of the genetic scientist is piqued by all this knowing one another. "This city is really a village", philosophises the wife of the genetic scientist. "We do not have this in Germany."

Labels: dinner, people, work

She walks passed me as I sit in the street, eating a quick dinner, watching the world go by, before meeting a friend for a film. An Asian girl, wearing a patterned white jacket, with fluffy white collar, contrasted by her long dark hair. But it is the red hand bag and the red trousers that come to just below the knee, the chunky red suede boots, that catch the eye.

After dinner, I go for tea in Borders. Take a window seat and read. A sharp man, pin suited predator, sits with an Asian girl, her hair cut sharp across the fringe. Dressed in black, she contrasts that with a white heart pendant. A second man arrives, also Asian, with the white guy wandering off after he has made introductions between the two. The Asian guy goes for coffees, then the shark returns, another Asian girl in tow. White jacket, red bag, red trousers, red boots. The same girl that had passed me earlier. The two pairs separate to different tables, and conversation takes on the buzz of a first, arranged date. White heart and Asian guy, red bag and pin stripe.

Labels: Asian, bag, borders, dinner, first date, guy, heart, pin stripe, red, tea, White