And there are the vanishing, vanished regulars. Those people you'd count on seeing at least once a week, but they seem to have disappeared, and you could put it down to G***'s departure...
...but G***'s left before, and they've kept on coming, no, it's something else, their loyalty to G*** is really non-existent, it's more the arrival of someone that's put them off...
...the return of the nephew, his grotesque pantomimes, poorly concealed distaste and hatred for our more disadvantaged customers, any, every illusion of fine dining has been lost, fuck the linen, the candlesticks, you'll get a better dining experience at McDonald's, and probably not be so insulted...
I check the obituaries to be sure, nobodies died, yet there's that extra-lengthy interval between visits between what once were our more loyal customers. The correlation is unmistakable. But there's no way to address it, and so it goes...