Cafe

by William Bowden

Cigarette curls and beautiful girls are the things that cafes are made of ... discuss.

Allright, allright.

I’m sitting in a cafe and the above is true — but what is there really to discuss ... I guess apart from everything around me:

We are being serenaded by the Village People as they valiantly attempt to parade out of one of the smallest, tinniest speaker systems in the world. In the background a baby is howling — the cry of life:

“I’m here ... deal with me!”

I’m one of a triad of lonely males — all marooned at individual tables. We all look listless, even as the waitress begins her daily parade/tease. My drink is almost dead, and the less-than-average Caesar salad is hiding in my gullet. The sun is blazing — a fucking military tattoo, and the Village People mingle strangely with the remix of reality — cars, busses,conversation, fountains, chairs, farts and perhaps even the odd groan. The chairs here are aluminium, and they look gloriously futurist whilst roasting in the hot sun.

So ... this is the adult ‘Tuck Shop’ — it’s more of a ‘Nip n’ Tuck Shop’. Gone are the fingerbuns and donuts — oddly playing understudy to foccacias and capucinos. An old woman limps in with a cane — her every step would put Sir Edmund Hilary to shame.

And off I go, paying my bill to the pumped-up waiter, grinning falsely as I make my exit. One last glance at the waitress — what a corker! She doesn't look like someone’s mum — rostered one for the day by an overzealous Parent’s and Citizen’s Association. She is the star for one half of the audience ... and the workout boy (the casual ‘Mellors’ figure) for the dreaming females. It’s still a fuckin’ Tuck Shop — and I’ll bet that chardonnay tastes like piss in comparison to a Mr Juicy.