A table for one

Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

The waiter asked whether anyone else was coming, and I said no with the confidence of someone answering a more difficult question. I had booked one place because I wanted to try the restaurant and none of my friends were free. For the first few minutes, I examined the menu as though it might provide company as well as dinner.

Then the food arrived. I tasted the sauce without waiting for a conversation to reach a pause. Nobody asked to share a dish I had chosen, and I could order another without negotiating whether we had all eaten enough. I had imagined solitude as a missing person across the table. It became a little space in which my own preferences did not need a meeting.

I did not discover that friends had been spoiling every meal. Shared dinners remain some of my happiest evenings. But one dinner need not apologise for serving a different purpose. When the waiter cleared the plate, he asked whether I had enjoyed it, not whether I had coped. I walked home satisfied and untransformed. I would book one place again when that was the place I wanted.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

The sandwich tasted perfectly good. The table beside the window was comfortable, and the café staff left me to read. I finished lunch without having to explain my order to anyone. It was an efficient meal in an agreeable room. It was also not what I had been hoping for when I suggested lunch to three friends who all turned out to be busy.

At our usual lunches, a small incident can become an afternoon’s story: a lost glove, somebody’s terrible train journey, an opinion tested and cheerfully contradicted. Alone, I could remember those conversations but not produce both sides of one. The absence was not a flaw in the café or proof that I could not look after myself. I had wanted an exchange, and eating was the arrangement through which we usually made it.

I sometimes choose lunch alone when I need quiet, and I would not want a stranger assigned to rescue every person at a single table. On this afternoon, however, quiet was the thing left after my first choice disappeared. I ate, read and left. Outside, I sent the friends a message proposing next week. Being able to enjoy my own company did not require me to pretend it was the company I had wanted today.

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about eating alone in public. Support your comparisons with detailed references to both texts.