Friday 10 October 2003

Irate 67

HS and I went for a late lunch in Cafe 67. We popped in later than the usual lunch rush hoping that it would be quiet with plenty of room.

HS had so wanted one of their egg mayonaise sandwiches (this is a strange food love of hers) I think she could eat egg mayo every day for a year and not be bored - much like her rocket fixation (as in I'll have extra rocket on my pizza, pasta, salad - she's also trying to grow it in her window boxes). But anyway I digress.

So it was packed (always happens when you go with a plan). We sat at the empty table in the middle of the cafe surrounded by a plethera of Finsbury Park people.

Two raggamuffin style boys were ordering cake at the counter. Then a table of police officers - one had a beige mac (a la Columbo), one had a pencil mustache (always a suspect style - I mean its very anal to shave just the top half of your lip every morning just so you have that sort of black outline thing going on) and one must have been ginger in his youth and was dying his hair to resemble that colour (and boy can dyed hair look weird). A couple of straggly haired school teachers in flared skirts and cardigans (then again they could've been librarians, although there isn't a library in the vacinity). A random hippy, wearing a straw hat with a long rainbow effect ribbon tied round it - he was sitting with some women who were rather non-descript next to him. Then the Greek Soprano businessmen (see previous post for description) who were having a total strop at the cafe owner, I've been here over half an hour and all I've got it this lousy glass of water (glass slammed on the table, half the water slops out - all you've got now is half a lousy glass of water).

And the waitress was wearing a tee-shirt with a slogan that said: I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that I was interested - I'm not.

The cafe owner turned 40 the day before and probably was hung over, being abused by the Greek Sopranos, trying to placate them by providing cigars. Two lovers came in shortly after we did and sat at a table directly in my line of vision - they couldn't keep their hands off each other and ended up sitting arms interlocked, she kept running a loving hand down his sideburn with their noses not further than 7cms apart (not that this is a bad thing - I just sometimes feel there is a time and place for everything and while ordinarily I would say restuarants are usually not too bad a place for this type of behaviour, lunchtime is definitely not the time).

So, unusually it was a great relief to retreat to the peace and tranquility of the office.

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