How To Survive A Family Meal
when it's not your family.

I'm not quite sure how much more of going to eat at the restaurant I can take. I gets worse every week.


Week 1: Not too busy, forced to eat far too much, and have a starter of Brie. Ew.

Week 2: Seated in the middle of the restaurant. Busy. Complete and utter humiliation, degradation and loneliness.


Week 3: Well...
I'd pretty much resigned myself to my fate. I had it all planned out- I'd go in, deal with the usual humiliation of the table for one, refuse a starter and a dessert and leave as fast as possible. Unfortunately, that wasn't on the agenda, apparently.
I knew it was bad as soon as I got there and I saw how busy it was. And not with just anyone. Hamid, the owner, had brought in his entire family for a lovely meal, including his beautiful daughter, wonderfully named (as everyone cared to point out) Yasmin. To be honest, she seemed quite nice. But I must say, she did not look Iranian. Not at all.
My dad, being so fabulously sensitive to my emotions, paraded me, in all my ragged finery, around their table, so I had to shake hands and smile sweetly at a million people who I will never remember.
That wasn't all.
Matthew, the other manager, has HIS family round, because it was his birthday. And because of his wife, Khatuna, half of them were Georgian. I was paraded round them too. They looked pretty confused.
I sat down at my table, but Matthew (who had had a few by this time, let's be honest) was all "NO NO, YOU SIT WITH US" except in his Australian accent. So there I was, sat at a table full of people speaking rapid Georgian, waiting for my food, Matthew chattering in my ear.
Then Khatuna brought they're 3 month old baby over and passed him to me. "YOU HOLD HIM AND I TAKE PICTURE", Oh God, Oh God. I do not know what to do with babies. He's adorable, but I was so afraid. I really like Khatuna and Matthew and so I was worrying so much. All I could think was "Oh, god, I'm going to break your baby". Luckily, they took him away before I could. But not before they could snap an awful picture of me.

The Georgians sang. It was amazing, actually. They have beautiful voices. One of them kept toasting anything and everything (I think he just liked to drink.
"To our countries!"
"To the children!"
"Who died!" It took me a while to realise he was trying to toast to dead relatives.

See the thing is, I really like everyone at the restaurant. They're very friendly people. There's Matthew, who kept trying to pour me some wine when my dad wasn't looking (never mind my protests that I didn't drink) and the Iranian chef who was horrified that I couldn't speak Farsi, and there's the really sweet Italian guy who calls me darling ("Here you go, darling.", "You want another drink, darling?"). It's not them I begrudge. It's my dad. Why does he subject me to such humiliation on a weekly basis? Can he not see how embarrassing it is to be a seventeen year-old girl who comes into a classy restaurant, sits alone, eats alone and then just leaves silently. And yeah, this week, I wasn't by myself. But honestly, when I was surrounded by the singing Georgians and the drunk Australians, I've never felt more alone.

"Time away is all I need." -Denali