Cappuccino and Dreams
On Fridays, the London Evening Standard comes with ES magazine. Each week, a celebrity is invited to share with us the names of their favourite things and places in London, such as the shepherd’s pie at the Wolsely or their guy on Jermyn Street. I think hell would have frozen over for some time before Cappuccino and Gateau on Cricklewood Broadway found its way onto anyone’s list, but it fascinates me anyway. The paint job, a weird, mauve (mauve? Yes: mauve) mixture of pavlova and vomit as puzzling as the name itself, is something I have never experienced anywhere else, and seems somewhat at odds with the intense, edgy atmosphere encountered within. Inside, Middle Eastern and Eastern European men drink jarringly strong coffee and smoke profusely, at all hours of the day. What on earth are they taking about? I alway think something intereresting, but it could be shelves. Which leads me, sort of, into a fantastic article by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian on the state of conversation in the iPod age. “At meetings, in pubs or at drinks parties, participants are in monologue mode, awaiting their turn to perform. There is time only for a clever quip before one is interrupted.” This could be why I dislike dinner parties so much. That queue to be amusing, which I always seem to be jostling to the front of, at the same time drives me nuts.