I’d gone to the coffee shop intending to spend the three hours focussing on drawing with my collection of dip pen nibs but was stymied by the cold. I mean I did draw but I was torpid and slow to react (and then the wild swimmers came in and I couldn’t believe that they’d stripped off and entered the water in temperatures that were almost zero). The cold clearly took its toll on the footfall, even the regulars were slow in appearing.
The man who reads his phone was in but didn’t stay long. Then one of his friends came (the emaciated one) but was joined by a woman this time. However, he did have his hat with ear muffs on (I love drawing him in that, it swamps his tiny head).
She left and then he was joined by another man and his wife. I’ve seen her before – a tiny little person, who smiles with her whole face and whose hair is very, very black (helped along a bit, I think, but who cares).
And it gave me the opportunity to try my brush pen. Is there a right or wrong way to use such tools, or is it just trial and error? There’s such a clumsiness to the learning process. Slowly, very, very slowly people started to arrive and I drew the queue, eager to find faces that interested me.
The effete man and his wife came in for the usual green tea (for him) and cappuccino for her. They sat close to me, not as they usually do on the long table by the door. And she was animated, smiling and laughing and doing most of the talking. I’ve never seen that before. She’s a beautiful woman with almost white blonde hair and her mouth, large and red-lipsticked went through the whole gamut of its muscles as they talked. I was entranced by such a transformation.
The man with learning difficulties was in as usual for his pumpkin latte but didn’t stay. I only managed a quick outline of the way he stands, his stomach protruding (an effect of the drugs, apparently, bless him).
Three college students took the table that the effete man and his wife vacated and I watched them as they all wrote their homework out by hand on notepaper. The boy had a half-shaved head with the upper part left long and tied back with a floral scrunchie. His hair a flame-red was completed with a beard. His finger nails were painted crimson.
In the quiet times I listened to the manager see-sawing between admonishing and encouraging her young staff. One, only seventeen had come to work in a tiny, arm-bare t-shirt and huddled against a radiator when she wasn’t serving, complaining of the cold. Another girl/boy who arrived later, with the dark shadow under her chin, is evidently transitioning. What courage to go through such a transforming in the full glare of the public eye. She is a quiet but a gentle being and appears comfortable there. And I’m glad.
I think a lot about the ethics of drawing and writing about the people I observe there. Keeping the café and place anonymous goes someway to protect their privacy, I suppose. And the stories I make up about them are just that, fictional. I don’t know them but I am interested in them. Let it always be just that, then. A way of paying attention, of noticing, or recording a moment in their lives. And mine.
