The wind still raging post storm Arwen, the coffee shop was as cold and inhospitable as the week before. But, draw I must, and I did. With the door either propped open or left ajar for it to bash and bang with the wind people don’t tend to stay. I drew the few who came in just after eight, trying to capture their bodies as they closed in on themselves against the cold. I had to draw quickly for they didn’t stand still for long. For the first hour it was just us, the man who reads his phone, and who only livens up when the thin man joins him which he did and they giggled together over a video on his phone, and a few ‘take-aways’ like the ex-chef sporting a hat with ear flaps.
The lanky, rubbery-bodied effete man came in just after 9 am
but sans wife. I draw him time and time again. His face and stance fascinate me for they are never still, even when he is alone. He drank his green tea on the end of the long table and then left. The small, shrew-featured woman who once remonstrated with my partner for taking a chair from the table she’d intended to occupy (they consequently made it up) took the place of the two giggling elderly men. She too wasn’t still.
If she wasn’t mopping her face and neck with a flannel (perhaps she is menopausal) she was bobbing up and down in her seat trying to see out the window. She was clearly waiting for her friend, the one with purple hair, who came almost half and hour later. I was happy for her, for them.
Two of the wild swimmers came in and the barista asked if they’d been in the water. ‘Have you seen the weather outside?’ replied the big man in the ear-flapped hat and lumberjacks’ jacket. They were followed by the impossibly skinny boy who used to work in the coffee shop but left to work in the vegan shop two streets away. He also fascinates me but, clearly running on a surfeit of energy he jerks and jumps about like a flea.
I had to respond fast and reached for a fat pencil and coloured crayons. Ex and current workers often drink there on their days off or come in early and drink and chat or being students work on their laptops, like the man with the curly pony tail, who is, as yet, nameless to us.
Their are several gatherings of men who come in regularly at the weekend. My partner, having been born here, knows many of them and raises a hand in greeting or talks gossip or golf.
The coffee shop opens an hour later on Sunday and both managers are in putting up the Christmas tree. One wears a Christmas jumper as does the quiet man with Learning Difficulties. (I try to draw him but the results are unpleasing, he kept looking at me and I squirmed making the drawing self-conscious and wooden.) The phone-reading man was in as usual but without his friend. I watched and listened to the staff as I drew. They get on well, and the laughter is warming.
The small man with droopy-eyes was in as usual, popping back to the counter for more coffee again and again. And the ex-tree surgeon too, a hugely tall man who always wears a red baseball hat. (A girl came in wanting a hot chocolate but had forgotten her purse. My partner jumped up to buy it for her but couldn’t work the app so the tree surgeon bought it for her instead.)
The skinny ex-barista returned the next day wearing a tight black woolly hat, behind him in the queue was an uncoated girl, her bottom tightly encased in a elasticated skirt. The strangers came later and sat at the table nearest to us. There was an energy to their group that was distinctly metropolitan. Evidently waiting to be joined by others, the man sat down only to spring up again and again to look out of the window towards the sea. He wore what looked like a green flower-pot hat and his voice was Tom Waits-esque and gravelly. His wife ( I presume) wore a biker’s leather jacket (‘It looks ridiculous,’ hissed my partner.)
The woman lit up when their expect-ees arrived. Two younger men, louche and confident, they sprawled in chairs, talked, ordered nothing. ‘Do they do breakfast here?’ one asked, and then not waiting for an answer proceeded to read his phone. His features were distinct, bulbous even and he wore a punk-like black mohair jumper.
I find it hard to drag myself away when it’s time to go and smuggle in two final drawings of another elderly man sitting with his friend.
As I left I told the pink-haired barista that her laugh was lovely. And it is.
