No sadder place.

I know of no sadder place to be than this café at six o’clock on a Sunday night in January. My wife is out so I’ve come to read a dreadfully sad book in a dreadfully sad place in the company of sad looking people who have nowhere else to be. The lights are bright and glaring, the music thin, trite and loud. Cold wind blows papers around the dirty floor each time the door opens and the atmosphere is bleak and futile. The toilets are padlocked, the newspapers gone from their rack and the coffee tastes vindictive. One of the girls at the counter is cheery, the other sullen. Jack, in the desperately sad book I’m reading, tries unsuccessfully to kill himself but he doesn’t get it right and ends up depressed because of it. And my feet are cold, which reminds me that I need to buy a new pair of boots for tramping round Donegal in February. I hate buying clothes and boots and all. Now I’ve gone and depressed myself.