The place and time and date at the top of the page tell me I am writing and sketching in Mac Donald’s on Avenida da República as of eight minutes past eight on the 31^st of January 2004. In effect I’m just up the road from Mark’s flat where he and Barbs and I – and a rotating fourth – lived together for the best part of three and a half years. The Internet tells me this date fell on a Saturday, which sort of makes sense. The night before for me must well have been violent as it could only have been a nasty hangover that drove me to Mac Donald’s on that cold evening.

Having ordered my standard comfort two cheeseburgers, small fries and a medium Fanta, I sit down at the table just to the right of the door as you come in. The place isn’t full and the ebb and flow of customers is gentle for now. Those already sitting with their food – in twos and threes and fours – murmur quietly amongst themselves between one salt-sweet spongy mouthful and another. I tuck into the contents of my tray and scan my surroundings.

Across the aisle, sitting perpendicular to me at a table for two, with Her gazing out towards the entrance, I glance at what I take to be a grandmother and her grandson. She stirs the coffee she has ordered almost as a matter of ritual – seemingly lost in thought and with no intention of drinking it – throwing periodic tender glances over at the eight year old sitting in front of her who plays with his food and hums to himself. Her left hand – the hand closest to me – holds the cup firm for the other hand to stir. On her ring finger she wears two wedding bands.

Two little dark girls – perhaps one five and the other six –tear themselves away from their distracted adults who are busy backing up the line at the till with complicated orders and rush down the aisle towards the glass doors that open onto the street. Grandmother reacts visibly on automatic, her spine straitening, in preparation to intervene should these girls make a dash for the exit. Concerned, she looks at them, then at me and then at them again…. Her inquisitive, drooping look of worry evaporates as the girls’ minders follow up from behind, calling them calmly, their arms full of warm paper bags. They exit in a scuffle of giggles.

Four swooning transvestites burst through the doors in an explosion of camp and kitsch. Tall and muscular, they are a tableau of cheap, garish war paint and big plastic hair. One of them turns in my direction and, with a pout, rearranges his look in the mirrored wall behind my head. I am invaded with a heightened sense of the ridiculous and I feel tempted to think that this expansive operetta can only be the prelude to some sort of joke. They remain in character, these working girls, until they sit down in silence, hunching over their trays, to shovel their food at speed into their scowling, chomping mouths. Smacking their lips, it is back to Bernadette and her friends and they make a scandalous exit stage left, leaving all their crap all over the table and on the surrounding floor.

The African girl who served me moves around the room picking up everyone else’s mess. Her T-shirt says she’s loving it. The smell of sweet sauce and knocked-off perfume finally overpowers me and drives me out into the cold, wet night.