Last week I was fortunate enough to have a day off in the middle of the working week – truly one of life’s most underrated joys. While everyone else was answering emails, I was free to do whatever I wanted to do, and what I wanted to do was purchase exactly six warm cinnamon doughnuts from the Donut King at my local shopping centre.

The Donut King is an extension of the food court, a place I spent many hours as a teenager doing teenage things: loitering, pooling money together to buy McDonald’s and finding different ways to slightly alter my school uniform to attract the opposite sex.

Even at a tender age, I appreciated the food court for the unique role it played in social spaces. It has always been a meeting place of sorts, a mecca for the hopeless and the hungry, the forlorn and the fed up.

The food court: a meeting place for the forlorn and the fed up. Credit: Dionne Gain

Got a half-hour lunch break from your eight-hour shift at The Reject Shop? Head to the food court. Desperately lonely but also not in the mood to talk to anyone? Head to the food court. In the mood for a dish that has been sweating under heating lamps for the entire day? Head to the food court!

Only at the food court can you truly eat alone together, munching fast food as time slowly ebbs........

© Brisbane Times