When you’re in the West End of London town and feeling peckish at lunchtime, it’s hard to escape the pull of the ubiquitous fast food chains for a re-fuel: Mayfair, home of the £20 cocktail is especially challenging.
Crossing New Bond Street through streams of Bentleys and revving Maseratis I sought sustenance and respite from the main drag. On Grosvenor Street I spied a couple of brightly painted tables and chairs sitting outside a cute wooden facade. An entrance gaily thrown open to the street dared me to walk past without investigating.
I walked in to more cheery furniture and a whitewashed bar at the back, behind which a young bearded man industriously attended to business.
“Are you a pop-up?” I asked, “Specialising in Crab by any chance?”
He grinned and gave me the lowdown. Open since early this year they are indeed that, and plan on staying in Mayfair for the duration of 2016, business depending. “Sit down! Sit down!” he insisted handing me a menu.
The first pedicure of the season is always a reason to be cheerful. And, cheerful is the order of the day at 
Pinter. Harold Pinter. The name says tension to me and a play fraught with awkwardness, strain, characters stretched to breaking point. I wasn’t sure I could handle a second one in as many months, but theatre invitations are rather lovely and it would be a hard woman that could say ‘no’.
I was here again. Years have elapsed since the last time I sat in the backseat of my parents’ car en route somewhere while my brothers played ‘I spy the flash automobile.’ Actually, I lie, the automobiles didn’t have to be flash – it was the identifying of them that was key. Whenever I spotted one and called out the name, I was generally ignored.
‘Oh, mate, I think this is Mr Gumball comin’.’
“Whaddya mean you’re having another double espresso?! What’s the matter with you Al?!”
Conversations with Strangers 