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It's been so long since I wrote anything.
I work from home. I don't love it - I feel bad at the end of the day unless I spend some time outside the house. I usually try to make time to go out for coffee after lunch or in the morning. Sometimes I work while I am there, sometimes it's more about escaping from work for a few hours.
I have 4 places that are usually on the cards:
This is closest to home, a 10 minute walk. Their flat white is ok. The ambiance is nice and they have some reasonable cake slices. The wi-fi is, surprisingly, crap.
I rarely go there these days. One reason is my wife disagrees with me about the ambiance being nice. The wi-fi being crap also blocks me from working from there properly. Also the other places are mostly better.
This is just a little further away, the difference barely matters. Their flat white is, erm, not terrible. They have one or two eats that I like, including savory options that can pass for lunch. There's usually plenty of seats available. The wi-fi is good.
I don't love the ambiance. It's one big open room. Close to lunch time it gets very noisy with people and kids and babies. Nothing that decent ANC headphones can't handle, though.
This is the most practical option if I want to actually get work done away from home. Get there, grab a snack and coffee, put on the headphones, get focused. I think this is also what pushes me away from this place when I don't want to focus on work. Really, if I wanted to stay inside my headphones I would have stayed inside my home.
It's good, it's practical, and I feel absolutely no emotional pull to go there.
What you have to know is I was a bookstore kid. My family would go to the mall and there was this giant bookstore and I'd read entire books there. That bookstore had a café which was the family headquarters at the mall. Each one of us might go elsewhere to browse or buy or stretch our legs, but at least one of us had to stay so we did not lose our table for the day. And gladly I'd stay.
The bookstore where I live now is a tiny one. It's a big chain store, but it has its charm. And it has a small café on the first floor.
This is across the square from the bakery place, so basically the same distance from where I live.
A few tables, not too many. I can usually grab one by the window, which is nice. You can see the people walking outside to my left, and I can also see the books on display if I look to the right. Decent flat white. Some tea options that, I'm told, are very good. Good cake.
Sadly, no savory snacks to my liking, so if I go there in the morning I end up leaving for lunch. Once I do that, it feels a bit weird to come back to the same café after lunch. I don't know why.
The lady in charge knows me by now. She does not know my name - she did not ask, I have not volunteered. I haven't yet figured out how the British learn peoples' names, since they never ask. In any case, she knows my face and knows I order the flat white and sit by the window.
I like it there.
Another thing you need to know is I don't really like flat whites. I mean, they are ok, you make some espresso, then you add some milk and it hides the fact that your espresso was not that good. Most espresso is not that good, so yeah.
What I really like is filter coffee. Beautiful brown-red, the right amount of sweet and acid, a hint of bitter. And for some reason it tastes better if someone else makes it.
The good coffee place is some 10 minutes further away after I walk past the bakery. It's the only good coffee place in the entire town. I go there several times a week.
The baristas all recognize me; it's possible some of them remember my name, which I mentioned once while talking to another regular customer. There are quite a few regulars and we politely nod to each other. Their dogs know me and my wife by now.
Alas, the eats.
Seriously, I don't know where they get those sad cakes. Thankfully they now have cinnamon rolls, edible, 6/10.
They have 2 (two) good sandwich options. These are pretty large, I get them when I go there in the morning and want to stay over lunch. It's a good lunch. They don't quite go well with coffee, though. And if I just want a small savory snack, no luck.
Besides the food, there's another alas: it closes down at 3pm.
SERIOUSLY
3PM
WHY
(The bookstore café closes at 5pm, the other two at 6pm.)
In a sense this keeps the purity of the good coffee experience. It lasts maybe 2 hours tops, and is focused on the coffee. If I go in the morning: I drink the coffee, I maybe do some work on my laptop, and soon I leave for lunch. If I go after lunch: I drink the coffee, I maybe do some work on my laptop, and soon I leave because they are closing down.
Screw that. I wish they had better cakes and other snacks and stayed open until 8pm. They would get even more money from me and I'd be happy about it.
There is no conclusion. I just wanted to write.