DOMODEDOVO AIRPORT – I remember when my hometown in Surrey got its first MacDonalds. I must have been about twelve or thirteen. No-one really knew how it worked, so they had staff on hand to explain the simple three-stage concept of fast food:

1 – Go to counter, get your food.
2 – Sit at a table.
3 – Eat your food.

Not all that difficult once you’ve got the hang of it.

Unfortunately, here at Domodedovo Airport – and in the burgeoning Starbucks, Costa Coffee and Mickey D’s all over Russia, the order appears to be 2, 1, 3. Which just doesn’t work.

Right now, for example, half the tables here at CoffeMania are occupied by people with no food (or coffee). Including several where children have been left, bereft of both company and sustinence, to mind the bags while their parents go to the Duty Free.

Half the customers with coffee, on the other hand, are standing around or squishing, like us, four people onto two chairs, because there aren’t enough free tables.

Do the math, people. It takes roughly as long to queue for your food as it does to eat your food. There’s enough tables for everyone, if only you’d stop occupying them for twice as long as you have to.

Ah well. I’m off to Barcelona for a week.