Customer relations
Sausage, egg and chips, he says.
They’re sitting at an outside table
so he adds Can you go in and order?
His wife’s eyebrows rise.
It’s just that I can’t see too well.
He taps the menu. And it’s true
he isn’t wearing glasses and
it will seem dark indoors to eyes
still self-protecting from the sun.
Maybe he’s been here before
and knows the counter staff are art school girls
who don’t have Suffolk accents.
He might josh and ogle one of them
if she were working in a pub
and all his friends were there.
But now – high noon in town – he fears
he’ll stumble over saying sausages
and fumble when he’s finding change.
And that will spoil his lunch.
It’s a bonus when their plates arrive
with the café’s one male waiter.
Now he won’t have any problems
asking for brown sauce.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is poetry editor of the online magazine London Grip and, along with Nancy Mattson, has recently restarted the occasional reading series at St Mary’s Church Islington (now retitled Poetry Above the Crypt).
Black Nore Review 