I can’t quite remember the words but I think the theme song to Cheers starts (or ends) with a sentence something like ‘a place where everyone knows your name’. The coffee shop where I go to draw (and he to read and drink coffee) has become rather like that. Not that everyone shouts out ‘Norm’ as they do when the postman comes into the Cheers bar, but it’s not dissimilar in that names are shared. And I, sitting in my corner, know them now too, though I tend to lend people my own pseudonyms so as to protect their identity. I like to be there. It is a place of challenge and pleasure for me. The bustle helps me to focus. There is energy and life and humour. I like getting to know the faces, their familiar chat, the places that they chose to sit and the drinks they favour. And when they don’t come in, such as the man who services fire extinguishers or the genealogist, I start to fret about them. But most of all I love to draw there. I am safe in my corner, and so far no one (apart from the man who runs the cider bar saying the other day ‘I’ll sit here so that you can get my best side’) really makes any reference to it or asks me to stop (though some do turn their backs to me, fair enough, I say). I miss being there on a Monday where emails have to be faced and admin done. Heigh ho.
Let them find a way to end the threat of invasion. Have we learnt nothing?
