Living the last three decades of his life in relatively modest conditions in Antibes, Graham Greene’s busiest room was All the World. The author’s most romantic image shows him not in Panama, Haiti or Indochina, but sitting at a table by the window of the same restaurant as always in the French city. It’s raining outside, the immersed novelist prepares to dine alone, and then narrates the picture with a candid story. It’s not raining anymore, and the author of The Calm American has a hard time navigating a big table alone in a tourist town.
After the ban on shelter in general and the taxi ban in particular, the last stage of the attack on locals is the ban on sitting alone at a table in a restaurant. Age, loneliness and widowhood are a triple discrimination. Singles are usually older than group diners, come individually because they have no other choice and are often widowed. The organizations where religious paying services are openly denied or belittled are the same organizations that received large grants for paralysis during the pandemic. During the dark years of the virus, no businessman refused to receive a portion of the economic contribution from customers they no longer rejected.
The advantage of going to a restaurant alone is that they serve you quickly because they want you to leave, not set an example. The expulsion of the censor requires equally drastic measures, such as slandering the behavior of these places, as well as keeping the memory of these places so that in no case do they come too often during the low season. In the case of terraces, we are faced with another continuation of gentrification, which consists in denying you access to the public space that you pay for religiously and protect with your taxes. The list of lone attackers is urgently needed, the stimulus is not the traitor.