30th April

So here I am, back in my favourite cafe. It's nice outside, so the sofas are free and I can sit opposite the door and watch the people pass in and out. There's a girl sitting at the table next to me. She has dark curly hair and big glasses. Her top is a dusty pinky-purple, and a thick material with an embroidered pattern of circles and shapes that fascinates me. When I first sat down and started getting out my bits and bobs, I didn't pay much attention to her. Until I looked up and realized that she was watching me intently. It's funny how odd it feels when you realize someone is doing to you what you're constantly doing to someone else. Even if more subtly...



A girl just walked into the cafe with hair tied up in a pony tail, red converse and a green-checked shirt underneath a dark blue, knitted jumper with three bunny rabbits in the front. When I say girl, I mean late teens/early twenties. The middle rabbit had a red and white striped waistcoat on. She is pretty, in a foreign-exchange-student kind of way (which is what I assumed her to be) and is reading "Three men in a boat", which she appears to find amusing at times. But that jumper..?
Two blondes have plonked their noisy selves next to me on the sofa. In the five minutes before I plugged myself in to avoid their noise, they giggled over a particular drink, covered the gossip of a recent party and squealed over a distinction. I can't help but think that the two cokes they've just bought can't be doing much to help their hyperactivity. "Oh, that's shocking!"

12th March

The cafe was full of students today. In pairs or groups of three they cluster around tables and chat and laugh. Excluding those with laptops and deadlines. Like the guy opposite me with his black Fujitsu laptop and foreign-student accent. He has an espresso in which he puts two sugars and a bottle of coke. When the waitress comes with his espresso he asks for a glass and ice for his coke. Twice he leaves to smoke a packet-cigarette and stand in moody indifference in the cold. I think he’s running on stimulants. He sits opposite me purely out of necessity. When one of the tables next to the wall is free he ups and moves, the empty seat opposite unnoticed by me until a little while later, when the lack of body to fill it shocks me.

When I came in, I sat down next to the oddest situation. There were two tables set up against the wall, as usual, with two chairs for each so that the pattern went thus: Chair, table, chair, chair, table, chair. In the chair nearest to me and the chair furthest away two men are sitting, having a conversation over their two own tables and the two chairs between. Like two men who are allergic to each other they sit, 4-5 meters away from each other, and talk. They are obviously strangers, in conversation because of a freak observation or random event that linked them for a few minutes. But in my head the possible stories fold over each other like cards in a deck.

It’s a shame I didn’t get a sketch. I was sitting in totally the wrong position.

Shame about the mess of this one. However, this is the best face sketch I have ever done. The guy was sitting on the next seat over from me on the sofa, his laptop on his lap. His face was blank - that kind of relaxed concentration when your mind is on what's happening on the screen. He was completely concentrated on his laptop, sitting very still, so I found it easy to work on my sketch without him noticing. However, he must have been talking to someone on the laptop, because just as I was doing his mouth he suddenly moved and a little smile crept across his face and lifted the corners of his mouth and melted the blankness. I'm glad I got that smile in.