Cafe Culture

The weather is absolutely glorious at the moment while I am writing this blog. I am sat outside a coffee shop in Heaton Moor with the sun in my face enjoying the continental atmosphere. I imagine that this would be the life of a writer. Sat in the sun, watching the world go by, and using your imagination to get lost in a made up world. I cannot think of any better way to spend my life, but I will have to see what destiny has in store for me. At the moment I sit in an office all day, with no windows, and never use my imagination. My imagination is like an under used muscle, and when I sharpen it it works a lot better, but I rarely get the chance.

I have had quite a nice week in the mainly sunny weather. I travelled to Cambrdige on Wednesday and that is a lovely place to visit, especially in the sun.

The punts were travelling past on the water that was reflecting the ancient images of architecture in the truest sense of the word. The place has an atmosphere of learning, obviously this is expected due to the fact that it is one of the worlds leading university towns. But, in the summer when most of the full time students are back at home in summer jobs, the place is full of overseas students experiencing the English culture.

It makes the whole place buzz in the same way that Barcelona does, it feels as though anything is possible if you would only apply your mind to it. Which of course I was the embodiment of due to the fact that I wanted to eat, and after putting my mind to it, I found an Italian restaurant and succeeded.

I sat in the restaurant on my own watching the hordes of revellers walking past from my al fresco vantage point. I began to think of dear old blighty and how it is subtley changing, away from the focus of the media.

The papers have you believe that knife crime is threatening to obliterate the entire youth generation. Benefit fraudsters and immigrants are fighting in the streets, and turf wars are developing in sunny hamlets.

But I think there is a large sub-culture developing in the small pockets of niceness that we still have left that is evolving into a more cosmopolitan lifestyle of cafe bars and culture.

There is much more opportunity to sit outside now and watch people pass by. Most of these places will still involve you being accosted by some homeless person. However, if you sit and watch people pass by in that type of area then inevitably a contingent of those people will inhibit your voyeur position.

But if you sit in a nice area then the people will respect your position, and like a peacock trying to attract a hen, they will perform for you. All manner of struts and catwalks did I witness in Cambridge, as the beautiful people all went by. Occasionally these were punctuated by the strangers in life, that are usually more interesting to watch.

In Manchester, the strangers are usually smack heads, but in Cambridge they are intellectuals that have blown their minds reading crazy philosophies of paranoia and medieval witchcraft. I saw one guy speaking of the end of the world, which I thought was a cleche but people actually exist, and also a man in a Jester's hat attempting to interest people to come to an evening he was holding.

They were weird but people just tolerated them better than in most places. There was no abuse thrown at them, or chairs, and people just accepted them as part of the free entertainment.

Now I am sat in Heaton Moor, a place literally around the corner from where I live. The ambience is still pretty much the same. The people walking past are a bit more urban, but still the respect is largely still there. This continental approach is helping England become more tolerant and that can only be a good thing.

This writing has been made possible today by Claire and I coming to an arrangement that every weekend we get a morning each to ourselves. I can then use that to write and Claire can use it to do what ever she wants to do. Hopefully this will avoid any arguments that we have had about time to ourselves, and make it better when we are all together.