Mocha Afternoons Maddi Hastings
This part of the high street really has a thing for coffee shops. Even the offbrand pub down the street has a Costa license. I take the zebra crossing and head towards the Welsh Street artesian café on the other side; it’s painted a horrible, foreign purple. A queue of customers pools out from the door, leaning on the sculpted fences that leave wet patches on the elbows of their jackets. I pass a couple of houses and end up at Pam’s Cafe, my regular. I usually sit in the back of the café and catch up with the footy scores. Today though, I was just lucky enough to get the last copy of The Star which hadn’t had the bloody inserts nicked from it - all because the alarm clock decided it didn’t want to go off this morning. My watch says it’s a couple of minutes shy of lunchtime, and already both of my lunch-spots are full. I’m thinking about going home - what else can I do? Go for a pub lunch? I’d rather not. I turn my back on the strip but as I do I notice a tree growing from the exposed side of an old cottage across the street. This tree is adolescent; it’s growing out from a somewhat thick root which escapes from beneath street level. A group of people have gathered outside of the building, and are reading a board pinned to the wall. What the hell - I head towards the entrance where a two-sectioned door lies half open. The colours of the building have come from another era entirely. On the pavement is a chalkboard, with ‘HOME-BREWED TEA, CAKES AND GOODIES…PRICES FROM 85p’ is written in messy capitalised text. Above the door is a faded Beachwood sign that has been chipped and bleached into obscurity by years of exposure. I can just about make out the words ‘Tea House’ from the sign. A record player greets me as I join a queue of people inside. Its needle skids along a well-worn vinyl disk, following a rocky path as the thin desk it’s on seems to struggle with its own weight. There’s a waft of cold air coming from the ceiling, where a fanlight has been left on. For God’s sake, it’s cold enough outside. I’m waiting in front of a podium where an old phone stands opposite a pile of menus. A faded laminated sign tells me, ‘please wait here to be seated’ in small lower case. ‘Hello? Is anyone here?’ someone from the queue asks. There’s a border of wood shelves hanging from the top of the walls. It holds a collection of novelty teapots coated in pleasing prints; the collection wraps around the dining hall twice over. Tables that look as if they’ve been taken from various eras and styles of differing shapes are scattered around the room.
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