Clearing the table - Telegraph The proportion of households with no table is rising. Already one person in five eats at the kitchen table only once or twice a week. As for a dining-room table, a great slice of the populace never visits it from one year's end to the other. This sudden collapse, or vanishing into thin air, of the sturdy table comes as a shock. We had taken it for granted. And no table means no table manners. In that respect it follows the hat, which, being absent, can no longer be removed. Hence applause, instead, at funeral cortèges. The disappearance of the table is not at all like the disappearance of fish-knives. Fish can be eaten in a civilised way without fish-knives. It is even worse than losing egg-cups, without which boiled eggs are more of a hazard than a treat. Yes, the loss of the table turns us from families with table-talk to a random rabble, eating, like the hordes of Genghis Khan, on the hoof.