I was back in the first choice back-up café yesterday. It took a while to get served. I made the mistake of sitting with my back to the counter. Something to learn from. It’s also taking me a while to adjust to the artificial lighting in this place, it's so deep and cavernous that the external lighting falls way short of my table, but the coffee, so far, is consistently good.
Today is the 21st anniversary of my first showing up in my café (still 11 days away from reopening). I'm still trying to work out here which of the waiters here are the standout coffee makers. Over the two and a bit decades in my café, I was able to build up a forensic-like knowledge of which waiter had made my coffees. In that time, there’s probably been three generations of waiters, the early golden age of the mid-00s probably never bettered. Armed with this knowledge now in the back-up café, I know I’m probably some way away from building up the same mental dossier here, particularly as it’s only likely to be a Tuesday stand-in café.
Early observations, the tall spoon is a little too heavy and big for the glass. The coffee, once your order has finally been taken, arrives very quickly which does make me suspicious, but as someone who needs HOT coffee rather than warm coffee, I have to say I'm impressed at their latte temperatures. As a serial latte nurser, early indications are the coffee here stays very warm for at least 45 minutes.
I have a morning of writing ahead before a scheduled lunchtime call, then the afternoon is given over to rehearsing my new stand up set which I'm doing for the first time this Thursday, and an early evening run. I’d gone for a lazy run yesterday in between the football, and that hard baked park is taking a bit of a toll on the lower back.
I’m being responsible and using sun cream but when I get back in from a run, it's run into my eyes and I spend a couple of hours smarting and pulling what are rare for me facials as the eyes struggle.
UPDATE
I had a good run yesterday evening. A fairly pleasant 10k, albeit marred by the return of the ‘fun’fair. These guys always set up on my favourite part of the trail, sealing it off with large fencing, and my altered route is more attritional. Still, it was a good run. A hot day so I was a little concerned when my left leg, as I ran through the edges of a meadow, felt some wetness on the shin. What else could it be when it hadn’t rained? Canine, more likely, or human, you never know, but it will be one of either specie. If I could regrow limbs like a lizard, well, I might well have considered abandoning the shin and waiting a few months to grow a new one.
A mentally difficult moment.
I noted that the wild camper is still there in a corner of the park, just round the trail from where I always start my run. He’s been there, joined now by his girlfriend for a few days, and based on what I’ve seen, I suspect this guy is homeless. If the authorities spot him, no doubt they’ll move him on. I haven’t seen this many homeless people in London since the early 90s. While I’ve never seen anything approaching Waterloo’s Cardboard City of old, I have seen several tents in and around south London, just on patches of grass rather than in parks. The homeless problem is definitely on the rise in this city.
The run ended with the worrying sight of an air ambulance touching down in the park, kicking up a load of dust, and no doubt dog muck particles were travelling through the air at that moment. Not an uncommon sight sadly. I still haven’t found out what happened. Nothing in the local news as far as I could see. I felt better for the run but at that moment, I did have a good thought for whichever poor soul was in need of that helicopter.
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