But then you don't need to have the restaurant at all, you just need to have the idea of a restaurant that sells the idea of a booking. Someone decides they wan

But then you don't need to have the restaurant at all, you just need to have the idea of a restaurant that sells the idea of a booking. Someone decides they want to pay £100 for a booking at Restaurant A, which actually only exists on paper, so now they have a restaurant booking. They can then trade that booking to you for some other amount of money, if they want to make a profit on it. How badly do you want to have a booking at Restaurant A? And now, you want to actually go to Restaurant A and eat a curry, but they look at you like you've grown an extra head. Eat Food? What, here? In Restaurant A? Congratulations, you've just invented banking, where people look at you similarly if you attempt to actually go and collect the gold that your bank says represents the money that's actually stored as a series of north and south magnetic domains on a thin sheet of rust painted onto a rapidly-spinning aluminium disk. Meanwhile I ring the guy at the restaurant started by his grandmother when she fled Pakistan at the end of the Second World War, about ten minutes before we show up, and when I get there I've got a pint of Guinness, a menu, and some chapatis and chutney already on the table. I prefer it that way. The food's better, for a start. I don't need the menu, the guy's just going to bring me the desi shit from the family meal.