cameo cafe observations. part 1.

Affected hand gestures. lattes. Stripes and too short fringes and always, always, the half pint. Full pints are masculine and don’t allow for explicitness in the arms and fingers while drinking. Full pints are heavy and wont to spill on stripy trousers.

These are the mannerisms of French girls in bars. Or the Spanish? They left before I had the chance to discern the accent, but suffice to say they were of the attention affected vowel sounds style as opposed to the hardlined digital electronic consonant of the eastern European. It was going to begin as a tale of people who had been sitting in the café for three days straight now, a story of all the things they had seen and done in this time and of the infinite stream of words and judgements which had been formed, pressed out, mollified, nullified, reiterated, trembled and decided on, once and for all. It was going to be a metaphor for life. But they left five minutes into us watching them, before the first paragraph of the rest of their lives could be completed. Wandered straight out of this narrative without a care in the world for its favoured directions and stomped off into someone else’s tale. But we shall press on regardless. The grand story must be told, and if its characters are fleeting, well, so much the better. In some ways that's a metaphor for life too…

So: they could have been sitting here for three days solid. Gesticulating at the barman (square glasses, fringe, art house cinema barman) for endless beer refills. Half pints do not last long. They storm in and out to the toilets, captivated by their own gestures, the flare of jackets walking through the crowd, always too much black curly hair and lipstick.

They don’t stay sitting at the table for long. The movies are waiting, wet streets to tramp on, a dozen cozy windowed cafes to dash inside, filling the cheap cigarette air with the first warm flushings of cheeks, then a trainlong rattle of inane and fundamentally important narrative, words of epiphanies, yes! important so long as the hands keep moving. Chin up. Nico poses to the ceiling. A particularly interesting light pattern spilling across the roof perhaps, a sterling excuse for coy.

So where are they headed now? The eternal question. They swept surefootedly from this mental image picture, hands smashed deep in woolen coat pockets, still glowing and glimmering faintly from bright lights and warmth. The feeling they have upon expelling themselves from the front door is everything, an early evening wet pavement foreign city tramline feeling, this night could well be the rest of your lives. There may be jazz or salsa, thick plumes of cigarette, café spun revolutions, your soul saved by the PA system, and definitely, definitely sticky floors.