I know you know this already, but

[desperance]

I do hate waiting in for people. Especially strangers, especially strangers I have to have a conversation with. Especially when they don't turn up the minute I'm ready for them. The boys have been shut away for safety, and they hate that too. And I'm hungry, and I have that English reticence about being caught eating by people who won't be eating too. (Actually, is that English? So many of my embarrassment-behaviours are easy to dismiss as English middle-class awkwardnesses, but that may just be lazy thinking. Though it may not be irrelevant to point out that when I was a kid, we were utterly forbidden to eat in the street in school uniform. Current pupils at the same school would never credit it...)