On Retreat

I'm on retreat somewhere in the depths of Yorkshire and it's been an interesting stay so far.  First of all, I have to go on this retreat 'cos that's what the denomination tell me I have  to do. Well, all the ministers got talking (as they do) about things in their churches.  The subject of reserved seats and 'my chair' phenomena came up.  There were stories of times long ago when seats were reserved for Mrs so and so or when Mr Thingamy kept losing his chair so he wrote his name on the bottom of it and up-ended anyone he found in it...  We wondered whether this was just a church thing or not.  We thought it probably was.  May I just add this story into the mix:
This morning, I woke up early and walked into town for an early morning coffee and a read of a (good) paper.  The young girl, still asleep I fear, opened the doors at 07.02am which is when I walked into her dream and woke her up by ordering a FlatWhite.  The coffee shop in question is really quite large and I chose to sit on the right hand side.  Nobody else was in the shop.  I sat down and began to read.  Two other people came in and sat directly behind me, squashing me into the table.  'Strange', I thought, 'there's a whole empty shop here  to sit in and they sit next to me'.  I subconsciously checked my wallet - yep, still there.  Anyway, I shuffled over a bit for more room, but was soon followed by the back of their seat, nestling between my shoulder blades.  Had I been a celebrity, I could have understood their desire to drink my coffee and sit on my lap but... well, as it was still early, I felt a call of nature and hoped the usually occupied toilet might be free for once: it was.  90 seconds later, I'm out and feeling like a new man only to find this couple sitting in my seat.  See, it's not just in churches that possessive seat hoarding takes place.