I am sitting in the window of a café in Paris. I am writing. I haven’t spoken to anyone in 12 hours. I’ve been thinking hard about a project I’m working on. I’ve been on a lot of trains in the past 48 hours and I’m due to be on a lot more when I leave the city in a few hours’ time. I pause at the end of my sentence and pick up my coffee to sip as I stare at Parisian life outside.
Two men are sitting outside the café at a table directly in front of me. One man’s back is pressed up against the window. They are talking and he is petting a gregarious dog. Suddenly he turns to face me. He nods. I nod back. He shouts through the window: “Deux cafés!” and points vigorously at the counter. He repeats himself again, rapping on the window this time for emphasis. “Deux cafés!” he repeats, louder. He adds a “maintenant” and turns around to face his friend before I can answer him.
I’m taken aback. I am not his waiter.
Something petty in me snaps.
I realise, a day later, that my overreaction comes at the end of a combination of things. I don’t like travelling alone, really. I find it hard to experience new places by myself – mostly because, having kids, you’re rarely alone, and you’re always experiencing things through their eyes. Also, it’s a strange feeling to walk around in silence. Maybe I just have one of those jobs where I talk a lot.
A day ago I left my home in Bristol at 6am to arrive in Paris by midday. I didn’t speak to anyone until my evening event, where I did 90 minutes of pure talking and then I was in silence again until the next day when I ordered a coffee in a café and tried to do some writing.
Before bedtime, the night before I left, I’d told my daughter I was going away to Paris to do a talk. She was sad. She said: “I don’t like it when you go to see places without me.” She asked me to show her Paris on a map and I did. She cried a bit and said she’d miss me. I started to feel the creeping guilt. And it stayed with me all the way until the man rapped on the window and demanded I go and fetch his coffee for him.
I don’t know why he thinks I’m his waiter. I’m wearing a blue jacket and I have my glasses on. Neither of these things indicate that I am a member of staff. The staff members of this café clearly have black aprons on.
In a flash, I feel petty. I’m trying to concentrate on the thing I’m trying to do, and also, I’m feeling lonely. I Google the French for “I am not your waiter” and I write it on my screen. “Je ne suis pas ton serveur.” I make it 100pt font size. He turns around again, almost to check whether I’m ordering the coffees. What a dickhead. God he’s wound me up. I look up the French for “dickhead”. There are a lot of options. I’m in a rush. I have to act quickly otherwise I might actually think about what I’m doing. There are too many options. Maybe as an idiom “dickhead” doesn’t translate as neatly into French and so won’t have the same impact as an actual French swear word. What is an actual French swear word? Also, it needs to be not too aggressive. Just the right side of irritated, and for me dickhead feels perfect.
Not thinking, I just write dickhead on my screen. “Je ne suis pas ton serveur, dickhead.” In 100pt font size. In bold.
I turn my screen to face the window. I rap on it. The man turns around and smiles. He looks at what my screen says. He takes off his sunglasses to read it again. He has this smile on his face that’s somewhere between confused and annoyed.
I turn my laptop back around and start writing again. He walks into the café and shouts for one of the baristas to make him a coffee. I keep my head down. It’s starting to dawn on me how utterly unnecessary and petty what I did was. I keep writing. I resolve to minimise trips away by myself in future.