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!"

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.

5th March

I don't know if any of the 'almost regulars' were there this week - I sat outside instead, in the sun.

There's a couple sitting a few feet away from me. As I walked towards the cafe a little while before, he was sitting alone. Sunglasses on, black hair and white shirt, watching me as I approached. Five minutes later, as I left the cafe with my drink to sit outside, there was his girl; a whispy blonde thing who fiddles with her gold bangles and always has a part of her body touching him, whether hand, foot, leg. He's on the phone right now, the hand holding the phone to his ear with it's elbow in the table top, blocking her out. She sits with one foot on his chair and watches him.



The ladies sitting at the table next to them look like old friends. They sit, cigarettes in between fingers, sunglasses hiding their eyes. The blonde talks - gesticulates - leaning forward while the brown in the red tartan coat leans back in her chair and comments. Her hair is dyed and wavy, her skin tanned. She seems almost bored. A power woman. When they go, they leave an ash tray of cigarette ends.