SW8 today.
The only place to be.
There is NO handwash in the gents.
But wait.
There is no actual handwash dispenser in the gents.
This is actually good news. Finally, there is some recognition that there is a problem. That the dispenser doesn’t dispense. That there’s a strong possibility most of the men in THE café don’t wash their hands after the loo. I did what I usually do. I used the handwash in the women. And there seemed to be even more vigour in my handwashing. The interlacing had a fluidity about it sometimes missing in this place when I wash my hands, seething at the absence of handwash in the men’s. The hope that there may be a new handwash dispenser finally winging its way to THE café fills me with optimism for the future.
Who are you if your hands aren’t clean?
It’s what separates us from Early Man and the beasts.
Yesterday’s rain has again led to a leak here. The water seeps beneath the tails, raises the floor underneath, meaning that every time the door is opened, the dog-like bark (recorded for one of my final shows last summer) is back with us.
To my right, a shaven-headed middle aged man, older than me, is having an intimate meal with his very young girlfriend. He’s wearing a suede jacket WITH TASSELS. This all but confirms the mid-life crisis. I’m a firm believer mid-life starts at 35 and I walked right into my mid-life crisis, one that arguably altered the trajectory of my life. Still, this is about Tassels.
He’s ordered a rather flamboyant cheese board, which I’m assuming he’ll be paying for. They’re in a risky spot, right by the loos, and the clientele here don’t mess around. Most of them live within minutes of THE café but think nothing of wrecking this place. You can’t bring a new date here. 22 years in this place has taught me that.
Sticking with the toilet theme for a moment longer, a Portuguese woman arrives with her young secondary school age daughter and husband. This woman has long run a cottage industry accountancy business from here. She too lives just streets away but has often been guilty of (literally) laying waste to the loos here. Tassels better hope she doesn’t put in a repeat performance in here this afternoon. That might harm his May to September relationship.
Elsewhere in THE café, a long-time husband and wife, probably younger than me, regulars here since I first turned up 23 summers ago, are having a late lunch. The man used to run a garage in Peckham, where I briefly lived a decade ago and is someone who’s just very good at making whatever business work. His wife runs a newish beauty parlour just several doors away from here, northbound. As she forks her meal, I note these days she’s eating and talking at the same time. I guess that’s where two people being comfortable with one another takes you.
In other news, I ran my second 10k of the week yesterday morning and as covered in Ep 417 of my Patreon show This is NOT a podcast (Link below) -
- I actually ran a 2023 PB, which surprised me as I was still feeling the impact of Sunday’s coach trip to Bournemouth and back for the 20-minute spot at what was a really enjoyable gig.
Archway, Tues 9 May 2023
Somehow though I managed to shave off 30 seconds of what I had targeted.
A few hours later, I was off to Regent’s Park to play with my old football team. It was good to see everyone and to do one of the few actual sporting activities I can honestly say I love. But I always forget that football does completely different things to the legs than running. I can run three 10ks in a week and the day after a run, I’m absolutely fine. But today, my legs are wrecked. It always happens after my first game of the year. My body’s just not used it. By the second week, I’m normally okay, but it may be an idea to not run these long distances just hours before a game.
I scored the game’s opening goal, left-footed of course (a suspected toe-poke), supplied a friend who’d urinated behind a tree with fragrance-free hand gel – I insisted – and then had my left foot studded twice by two youngsters on the opposition team who were wearing boots.
Back in THE café, Kissing Cousins Blonde Elvis arrives for his evening shift and goes in for a hard, The Wire-like masculine embrace with The Beard. It’s actually good to see a mixture of different nationalities working in THE café in this era because it helps the Portuguese waiters speak better English. I’ve touched on this before but in the early noughties here, only the late owner spoke English. The much-missed Veteran Waitress with the mucky fingernails, who still puts in the odd early morning cameo, serving coffees and breakfast while cleaning the loos in-between (and probably not washing her hands) still can’t speak English. You may as well have my aunt and uncle working here. This is a different era now. Like the Premier League, THE café has gone global.
17:03hrs
The Head Man of SW8, his hat finally off, the collar of his jacket turned up perhaps to disguise the full scale of his oversized skull, has arrived with his partner, Mr Laidback. Both look very tanned, especially Laidback. I’m assuming this is the result of a holiday given we’ve had about two days of spring here in the UK this year.
Nothing ever seems to ruffle Mr Laidback. I like that. It’s a great quality. He rarely pays for anything. He strikes me as a man with a lot of free time. The Head Man regularly battles to have laidback pay for their coffees, but this is rarely successful.
17:20hrs
Inevitably, Head Man and Laidback are bickering again over Laidback’s refusal to pick up the tab.
Outside, Wild Hair, her barnet has something of the straw-like quality of Tim Minchin’s, a local, Portuguese, but unlike most of her generation in these parts, like me, actually born here to parents who like mine must’ve come here in the seventies, walks past THE café she rarely steps inside these days, two infant boys in the school uniform of one of the local schools trying to keep up with her.
She’s still smoking. She and her ex always loved a cigarette. None of this vaping business for them. She actually left the guy about twelve years ago now to hook up with an old Portuguese flame. The jilted guy, an Englishman and reformed football hooligan, who regularly boasted of being ‘pure’ English and being able to trace his bloodline back almost a millennium (that far back, really?) was crushed by her deceit and during the early noughties, was regularly comforted in here by a bunch of broken male regulars. He actually triggered the end of my anonymity in this place with his New Year’s Day greeting back on the first day of 2015, just outside this place.
It was a lesson to me, a warning of what might happen to any couple here if they were to split. Who gets THE café? In this instance, he did, though by 2017-18, he’d quit this place after almost two decades, feeling them rude and the service lacking, and now has his coffees just a couple of minutes north of here.
Of course, when and if I were to get into anything again, it goes without saying that when we do go our separate ways, the other half can take me for whatever they like, but there’s no way they get this place.
This is my home.
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