Long Lunch

When I was 21 and lived in Germany my friend Petra said to me one day, “I’m going to pick you up for lunch tomorrow”. True to her promise she arrived around noon and she didn’t drop me off until about 1:30 in the morning. See to Petra, lunch meant going to her mother’s boyfriend’s restaurant and basically holding court at a table drinking wine, eating a little, but mostly talking to everyone that came in the door. We had only a about a week left in country and had disconnected our phone in anticipation of our move so I was at Petra’s mercy, unable to contact H and tell him that I was still having lunch. When I finally did get home, he was pacing the floors thinking something had happened to me. Today’s lunch wasn’t so extreme but it was the closest I have come to my lunch with Petra in a long time. I met a work colleague at an exhibit and then we went to lunch afterwards. Our outdoor café lunch was about five hours long and consisted of food, LOTS of alcohol, lots of laughs and then some coffee. I took an extra long walk through Westminster, past Big Ben and all of the beautiful buildings before heading for the tube station, thankful I was sober enough to find my way home.