Meanwhile

café musings

photo © the author

I am typing this on my phone whilst having a latte and artisan cookie
at a café where various Gen Z sit hunkered over their laptops along the oak shelf by the picture window set slightly below pavement level, next door to the My Hotel.

I’m an interloper, boomer in sheep’s clothing, determined to commune alongside them on my 4G cloud for at least twenty minutes.

I’ve even picked up a loyalty card and had it stamped with violet ink as if to prove my credentials. The service is smooth, unobtrusive. Less of a performance than at Tate Modern when my flat white was fiercely cradled as it was brought into being and I hardly knew where to look.

I muse how local cafés have evolved over time. The Penny Farthing that I often visited as an art student with its dinky tea strainers and endless supply of blue willow pattern. The old Fortes café on the seafront, shaped like a shoe box and retired from the sun, where I was taken as a child for frothy strawberry milkshakes that left cloudy rings on dark brown Formica.

It may be to do with the early spring light, but a part of me wants to pretend I’m somewhere in New York, a chic part of mid town that never existed with discreet jazz funk playing in the background.