The atmosphere was great and although quite noisy we really enjoyed not "Being alone" as we had been for the weekend. We ordered a nice bottle of wine and some scrumptious food and just enjoyed the experience.
Just after we finished our main meal we noticed a young white man sitting down at the table outside our window with a pint of beer. He lit a cigarette, took a sip of his beer and then took a call on his mobile after which he got up and promptly left, abandoning his now nearly untouched pint of beer on the table. As there was a drizzle and it was on the cold side there were no other people sitting at the single row of covered outside tables.
Time for my "after dinner" smoke break and I headed outside. Lit up my cigarette and looked at the "Lonely" unfinished pint sitting on the outside table, wondering what important call the young man had received to make him leave his pint like that.
Returned to our table and within a few minutes we noticed a staggering black, man of the street (Hobo) coming towards the abandoned pint. He stopped, looked around for a few seconds and then promptly grabbed the pint and took two huge gulps, put it down and staggered of. Not even two minutes later he re appeared, grabbed the pint and took another big drink before disappearing not to be seen again. The pint had now been enjoyed by two total strangers with about just under half left in the glass.
Strange but true and we both laughed and talked about what we had just witnessed. Another five minutes or so passed while chatting when a Chinese tourist looking man walked up to the table, looked around, and then grabbed pint and what was left of it and finished it of before casually walking away. Again we could not believe what we were seeing and laughed some more about the now, three total strangers that had shared the pint. It was funny but the whole idea a bit gruesome, come to think of it.
We did discuss the idea of buying another pint and putting it on the outside table to see what would be it's fate and even taking photos if the same sordid story unfolded but it was already late so we finished our wine and left.
I wanted to call the story the "Beer & the Threesome" but decided the Abandoned Pint deserved some dignity and named it as such.
