Downside #15

People steal your spare chairs

You travel alone, you eat alone. It's fine, you're a grown-up, you get used to it, you start taking books to restaurants, it's no big deal. But do they ever have one-person tables in restaurants? No, because that would be like putting up a sign saying Sad & Lonely Enclosure. So instead you have to take a table with two, or three, or even sixteen spare chairs. And sooner or later, no matter how empty the place is, some group of laughing happy people will come along, see your chairs and ask if it's OK to take them. Except that's not really what they're saying - look in their eyes and you'll see it's more like 'haha, I see you are a sad and lonely person with no friends, whereas I myself (look at me!) have lots of friends, in fact so many that they urgently require me to relieve you of your spare seating so that we may all sit within three feet of you and grant you no respite from our inane chatter about, say, hair gel, networking and the war in Iran'. When I open Tom Bohemia's House of Ribs, the Sad & Lonely sign will be the first one up.