Ever had your space usurped by an unwelcome guest in a public place?

Ok, now imagine the location is a cafe that’s entirely empty besides the table you’re sat at, and your visitor literally just plonks themselves down in front of you, as if attending an appointment at the sexual-health clinic, where all physical and eye contact is stringently avoided with other patients. I fall victim to such onslaughts almost daily, yet on each occasion I am equally disarmed by the situation, showing the same visible signs of mock-adherence, while I quietly simmer.

Bearing in mind it’s difficult to initiate conflict when someone has already seated themselves in front of or beside you, and it’s even harder to respond to a closed question, the easiest option might be to move to another table. However, the table where you are sat has the only comfortable seating arrangement in the entire room, so to placate you’re unwelcome visitor would not only be an admission of defeat, but would also mean sacrificing your own comfort and wellbeing.

Us stubborn Brits are often criticised for our ‘stiff-upper-lip’, preferring to appear to capitulate than say what we really mean. A smile is forced through tight lips pursed in aggravation, a mere squeak escaping through bitten tongue. 

But let’s suppose you tell them what you really think of this proposed imposition: ‘I’m tired and hungry and I’m trying to steal a couple of precious minutes away from the noise and chitchat of the busy office to which I have to immanently return. So no, I’d rather you didn’t join me, and yes I do mind’ – Such resilience wouldn’t make for a particularly relaxed atmosphere, for you or your ill-mannered table partner.

Besides my obvious abhorrence towards uninvited dinner guests, what I really can’t understand is why anyone would want to sit with a total stranger as they gorge themselves on what can only be described as a malodorous and gory array of processed foods whilst intermittently tapping away at their laptop and slurping their latte.

In future, you might think twice about parking yourself and the entire contents of your office on the single sofa of a public space, especially in the kind of place attended predominantly by retired gentlemen and mothers with pushchairs who will certainly raise their eyebrows at your occupation of the ‘comfy’ corner.

The exception to this rule is the pub, or ‘public house’ – the hub of social interaction by its very definition.

Although I’ve been guilty of using my laptop in a cafe, I think there is something inherently austere about doing so in a pub.  And if someone starts talking to me or motions towards my table, I still feel a compulsion to oblige them, not in the same stiff-upper-lip kind of way as I might in a cafe, but rather out of some forsaken or displaced sense of duty.

Unlike a cafe a pub is not simply a pit-stop or a production-line, but a place of paradoxes: a sanctuary for serene and sometimes sombre reflection, where one may be engaging or equally disparaging, according to his or her mood. Here an unwanted guest can turn into a stalker or become a friend for life.

By Amanda Carey/MOLI