The buzz of conversation rattles around me like rain on a window pane, disrupting the silence of my solitude – silent that is except for the pain that scrapes constantly in the depths of me, reminding me that I’m alone, without the man I love.

All around me people are sitting talking, eating, smoking and drinking. The chatter rolls and crashes, while among them weave the people begging or trying to sell tissues, socks, things of no consequence. The movement from table to table of relatively well-dressed people, each with a story to tell, disrupts the complacency of the good life, weaving anxiety and uncertainty into the scene. The constant flow they form as they cadge cigarettes and brazenly present their need rattles at the edges of the good life, although it is a world not without its troubles.

I also feel discomfort when the beggars and cadgers come, but I am also a beggar at the tables of others. Does my need for love, company and presence disrupt the world of those I turn to now, does it unbalance their sense of the good life when I ask for scraps of their happiness, love and time? Do they sometimes wish I was not there, not because I am asking them to be generous with what they have, but because my situation rattles the windows of their own security?