La Librairie Café: 4 Place du Marche
This cup of coffee! I drank it relatively quickly in Cressy la Chapelle just two days ago. Such a long time ago. Now I am in a cold house with rain and the dog cuddled up at my feet. When I was drinking coffee, I was sitting in the small outside area of a bookshop cafe besides a canal with pond weed waving in the stream.
It was lovely; bright colours, books everywhere but in French, blue skies and warmth on my face. I sat and gloried in the moment. Just a couple of minutes walk away my family (Do I really dare call them my family?) were in the Air B&B, whiling the morning away with tablets and table top football; earlier we had eaten croissants and pain au chocolat in our airy flat.
And that is it isn’t it!? The dream. I don’t know what the dream is of but it is definitely a dream I approve of.
I like to think I have been to France a lot but I haven’t really. I have distant memories of beaches and us children in the shiny sea. I have memories of the wonder of peaches and peach juice running down onto our bare chests. Since when did peaches become something routine that you would put in the basket and realise later were rotting where you left them? I prefer that time of awe at the mounds of something exotic and terribly exciting. Those were innocent days and, I think, joyful days. I remember sand, hot on my feet, I remember the smell of pine sap and the coolness of the forest. I don’t remember anxiety or fear or sadness or resentment, just the smell of the fresh grass at the floor of the tent and my mum’s sunglasses and being told that Perrier water might taste very strange to us.
There have been times in cafes since then with tiny cups of espresso and lots of sugar in the deep dark liquid and cigarettes and and …
And despite the joy and the romance and the sound of gulls and fishing boats in the harbour, the smell of the market and the cheeses in the street besides us I remember the need to leave and work out the tip and walk into the brightness because despite it all I do not know what to say after the cup is empty.
I had a noisette the same day as the espresso; in the creperie. It was a tiny, tiny, restaurant; maybe four tables. The owner, or at least I think he was the owner, had skin so black and a very handsome face. He was so kind and warm and respectful of our poor language; one of those people who you think is born wise but containing a sense of joy and humour I can never even reach into.
In our creperie we laughed a considerable amount. I never know what it is that we say but between them Wendy and James and Charlotte were outrageous; just a chittering giggling gathering group of humans, they were rude and imagined they might be kicked out for poor behaviour. James started off eating his crepe with his hands but then settled down to try to work our how his wonky fingers could work the knife and fork to chop bits out of it. Charlotte defended her banana and Nutella crepe from Wendys fork and then got too full and left us both to finish it.
That is how it should be.
I have spent many, many, hours in coffee shops, I prefer them to pubs in some ways which I almost never go to nowadays.
People talk a lot of male friendships and how we don’t have them, how we don’t have the people to speak to, to express to. I doubt our assumptions about this. I have spent hours and hours in conversation over coffee in cafes and kitchens, mainly with women but also with men.
I don’t really do that now, I think we have our own codes or maybe people of my generation do. I do not understand it but because I am part of a family and love Wendy I would worry if I were to say to a women; “Lets meet up for a coffee and a natter.” I would worry she would feel betrayed.
I know hardly any men and the thought of new relationships with them feels threatening, mainly because I don’t feel manly enough to know how to talk to such people and doubt they would like the content of what I might say if I knew how to speak clear of conventions of conduct I have never really understood at all.
Us men are often assumed to be unable or unwilling to talk, but I wonder if there are codes we do not acknowledge; that assumption that if you are a heterosexual man you should not talk intimately with a woman who is not your partner. That old assumption of what men like to talk about which just doesn’t remotely appeal to me. When I was single for some years, I learnt to talk to many people, over coffee in cafes, over whisky, walking the beach. Now, while delighted to be in my family, that is less common. I wonder at the ways we are meant to behave in company and when in couples and families that we don’t vocalise even to ourselves. I wonder if men like me have the same opportunities for friendships some women take for granted?
But I need to get off my hobby horse!! If I am honest, I often struggle to talk in many situations with anyone. It is often a bewildering and alien activity to me. I often prefer the solitary table, my dark coffee and my book.
But back to those cups of espresso; I did love them just as once, I loved Gitanes and Gauloise. I never could finish a pack but I did love them; just as I love the sound of someone speaking French when I can only understand every tenth word!
And those moments in the café a few days ago, with the slip of the water besides me, the blue sky, my kindle unused, because it somehow seemed like sacrilege in an independent book shop and that knowledge that I don’t really have to put my family in brackets with a question mark as I did earlier; that they really are something I am integral to and that I have a wider family who also like coffee and crepes and somewhere not too far away I have a son who I almost dare to believe I might see again one impossible day.
That dream? That maybe life can be filled with lots of moments musing in cafes knowing there are people near by trusting and looking forward to my return and that I can at last begin to believe this.
(Photos; Cressy La Chappelle, Breakfast and the Librarairie Cafe -October 2022)
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