cafes

Friday Fun – November Nonsense

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Where does this door lead? Find out further on.

What is your latest time waster?

One could say it’s a good warming up exercise for writers. Words with Friends, will they still be your friends after frenzied competition? If you have friends or relatives on other continents there will always be someone who is awake to play, even if you are up very late or early. Unlike Word Blitz and Quiz Planet there are no time constraints, so I do not have the excuse of my hands not working quickly enough for losing all the time.

In the meantime I don’t seem to be getting very far with Duolingo and the owl is always sending me sad or cross email reminders.

Meanwhile back in the real world, did Aliens leave this strange monolith? Find out where it is at the weekend.

Do you like peeping in windows? Who lives here?

Not sure… perhaps you prefer eavesdropping.

Cafes provide ideal opportunities to listen in to other tables, perhaps even snap what they are eating…

‘It was so windy his hearing aids blew off.’

‘She’s a tidy sort of person, so usually when she says the house is a complete mess she means she hasn’t emptied the dishwasher, but when we went to stay, the house was a complete mess.‘

When you hear a whole coffee and cake’s worth ( slowly eaten ) of a holiday from hell you are tempted to join in. ‘Oh that’s just like when we went away with… ‘

But you don’t need to pretend you are looking at your phone or absorbed in your cake. The queue at the shop till is just as fascinating. This is why we must keep human beings at the till. The young chap on the till is busy taping two large rectangular multi photo frames together for a customer. She had explained in great detail what happened last time she bought two such frames and why she needed them taped together to make carrying easier. She then went on to explain why she had bought and was buying again these frames and detailed how many grandchildren she had, referring to how many children she had had and probably about to describe how she had met her husband, but by that time he had finished wrapping. A self service checkout would not have helped her, nor listened with interest to her saga…

How has your week been? Eavesdropped on anyone interesting?

Do you play any addictive games?

Silly Saturday – Strange Shopping

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I’m busy with visitors, just time for a quick trip to the shops for a few essentials.

Shopping makes you tired so it’s handy to have somewhere comfortable to sit.

And if you take your visitors shopping make sure you choose somewhere easy to find to meet up if they get lost…

...or you never know where you might end up...

...or what you might end up buying.

Your visitors will need a cup of tea after all that shopping.

What is your ideal shopping experience?

Free Range

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You don’t have to be a chicken to go free range. Like chickens, outdoor reared pigs and hill sheep, free range humans are well adapted to life outside and wandering free. They don’t need to be shut in or put in a vehicle if it rains or snows.

Like us with the Covid pandemic, free range chickens recently had their life style cramped with outbreaks of bird ‘flu, but unlike other animals, free range humans don’t usually get eaten.

I have been wandering around by myself since I was seven and set off for the first day at junior school. Freedom was at my disposal, well as long as I didn’t take the short cut through the large park, which was like a rhododendron plantation with lots of hiding places. I was allowed to play there with my friends and had no idea why solo walks were forbidden.

Plenty of drivers enjoy walking and leaving their car at home, but for the dedicated non driver there is the added excitement of knowing you have to walk to get to places and buy your shopping.

Perhaps the three big ‘C’s, Covid, Cancer and Chemotherapy have enhanced the delights of being allowed or able to get out whenever I like. I am also only too aware that plenty of people my age or younger are not so lucky, whether struck down with strokes or waiting for new knees and hips. I don’t take being able to walk far and fast for granted.

During covid we were allowed out for a walk and many people discovered walking for the first time, but we weren’t allowed to go anywhere, just back home. The joy of our regained freedom is destinations, meeting your friends for coffee and cake, going to your favourite groups or just going anywhere with people interest.

Whatever the destination the free range human just goes there, no worrying about finding a parking place or nervously looking at the time in case their parking runs out. We just nip down footpaths or cross the river on a ferry. The free ranger is not always on foot, we can jump on a bus if it’s raining or we have shopping to carry. We could jump on any bus and see where we end up. The free range human sees life. The writer certainly sees real life on the bus, but that’s for another blog. The photographer can pause and snap whenever they spot something interesting, which is why I have so many photos in my WordPress gallery.

For our health we don’t need a running machine and step counter, though now I have a smart phone I can’t resist seeing how many kilometres and flights I have done. You can enjoy fresh air, nature and the four seasons or human life and the camaraderie of others ‘on the road.’

Do you like walking or jogging. If so, do you wander locally and walk your dog or are you very adventurous going up mountains and doing marathons?

Friday Flash Fiction 440 – Stopawhile

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Not as sweet as sugar, smoother than chocolate, more luscious than a peach; neither food nor drink. That is how I would describe it. There was no description on the menu; it didn’t appear on the menu at Stopawhile. Ravi told me it was the nectar of the gods when I first tried it.

‘What a perfect description’ I replied, licking my lips in satisfaction.

‘No, it IS the Nectar of the Gods’ he said simply.

You couldn’t order, only wait until it was offered.  Ravi was the only member of staff to serve the nectar; come to think of it, there were no other staff.

It was a new café, where the old hairdressers used to be; the shabby blue and white had become warm brown and orange. Inside you could slip into a cosy corner, relax on a leather settee and linger as long as you liked. There were newspapers and exotic magazines, wooden chess sets and marble solitaires. The nectar deserved to be sipped slowly.

This was an ideal place to flop down with my shopping and sneak out my notebook; recharge my batteries before going home to tackle dinner. The nectar, in its delicate pottery bowl, seemed to stimulate creativity. My writing group were impressed with my short story and urged me to send it off to the competition, I won. I began a novel.

Of course I recommended it to other people, suggested friends come with me next time they came round. Somehow no one else happened to go that way.

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On Monday afternoon I staggered off the bus with my shopping, cold, tired, with blood sugar level zero; I was looking forward to my visit to Stopawhile. But it had gone; not closed down, disappeared. I thought I must have walked past it and retraced my steps. Bank, charity shop, greengrocers; it should have been next, followed by the bakers. I stepped into the greengrocers feeling bewildered; perhaps they had bought the little café and expanded into it during the weekend.

‘What’s happened to Stopawhile?’ I asked.

I was met by blank stares.

‘You know, the café next door, it was there on Friday.’

‘You mean the one up the road?’

Flustered, I bought a bunch of bananas and stepped carefully outside. On the pavement were the usual stands full of fruit and flowers and next door was the bakers. I stepped inside the tiny shop and tried another tack.

‘Have you moved shop?’

‘Not in the last hundred years.’

‘But what’s happened to Ravi and the café next door?’

More confused expressions. ‘If you’re looking for a café, try the Cosy Teapot up the end of the high street.’

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