Celia Walden

on the discomfort of eating out alone;

Would you like to wait until your whole party is here?’ asks the waitress. I want to formulate an answer that’s both casual and empowered; to tell this ab-tastic teen in her navel-knotted Ramones tee that, ‘This is the whole party. Today it’s a party for one.’ Instead, a kind of apology drivels out. ‘Actually I’ll be dining alone,’ I say, the vowel sound echoing tragically in my head. ‘Right,’ she flings back with the kind of brisk, sympathetic smile you give chatty old women on buses. ‘I’ll bring you a menu.’

‘Bet you can’t stick it out,’ my best friend had wagered, ‘and remember you’ve got to have wine and dessert.’ That tarte Tatin was one of the least enjoyable caramel and pastry-based dishes of my life. Never mind that I’d brought with me more props than a Rugby World Cup: the phone, the book, the pencil (for spurious annotation purposes), two newspapers and a hairband with which I could tie and re-tie my hair in a vaguely distracted way that screamed, ‘Far too busy with myself to even notice that I’m alone!’ In theory it should have been fine; in reality that meal was my most self-conscious to date. Because British women may have made it to Number 10, Everest and Space Station Mir, but they still can’t eat alone in a restaurant – and I want to know why.

I’ve eaten and drunk alone in Paris, Barcelona, New York, LA and Rome (where no blonde remains alone for long). Furthermore, I’ve relished it. But in Britain it’s either an endurance test or a statement – sometimes both. Think about the last time you saw (or were) a woman eating or drinking alone. Members’ clubs don’t count because, despite all the eating, drinking and ‘working’ that goes on in them (the ostentatious laptops and prescription-free glasses), it’s all about posing. Two snatched triangles of bread stuck together with paste in the corner of a coffee chain doesn’t count either. I’m not talking about eating and drinking out of necessity, but for enjoyment.

And maybe that’s what this is all about. Despite all our advancements and pronouncements, something about women publicly, flagrantly enjoying their own

Why not give yourself a head massage in public while you’re at it, slide down in your chair and start moaning in ecstasy à la When Harry Met Sally?

company still jars. Shouldn’t we be adjuncts and accessories? In herds, gaggles or propped up by a member of the opposite sex? After all, we don’t go to sporting events on our own. We don’t go to the cinema or clubbing alone (yes, I know we can, but do you?). And eating… well, it’s just so embarrassingly sensual, isn’t it? Why not give yourself a head massage in public while you’re at it, slide down in your chair and start moaning in ecstasy à la When Harry Met Sally? When the truth is that at a certain point in a woman’s life the one thing guaranteed to get you moaning in ecstasy isn’t tarte Tatin, but a few minutes alone. On my wedding day an elderly relative dispensed the following advice: ‘Always give your husband a moment alone at the end of the working day.’ I’d like that moment too – preferably over a cheese plate and a medium-to-full-bodied merlot.