Tag: café
The Trellis
It is a blisteringly cold day. A little bus adventure brings us to Rottingdean. Rottingdean is a quaint little English village near Brighton. “What do you want to do?”, she asks. “I want to go to a tea house with doilies on the table”, I say.
Off we go, and it is not long before we find the Trellis. The restaurant is completely chock a block with chintzy tea pots and more knick knacks than a car boot sale. You can’t look anywhere without spotting a brass cannon, or a ceramic greyhound. Behind and on the counter, precarious stacks of mismatched saucers, tea cups and tea pots.
We choose cake, and a cream tea with scones, made by the owners daughter. It is perfectly divine, along with the steaming pots of tea.
@TheTrellisRestaurant
Northcote Road, Battersea
A new café opened up on Northcote Road. It’s one of these generic pretend French ones with a name that is already forgotten (at tim elf writing, I actually think it has already closed down – probably out of sheer blandness). The best bit about it is the street view. From this side of the road, near the Battersea Rise end, you can see quite far up the road. I think it is actually my only drawing looking South on Northcote Road.
There’s scaffolding on the Co op, and that’s Wakehurst Road church in the distance. I’d always thought it lost its spire in the war, but recently learned it was taken down in the early 70s because slates were sliding off!
Café Culture, Camberwell
Café Culture in Camberwell is the cheap nosh hub for Camberwell Art College students.
This is another obstruction picture – where the thing blocking the thing becomes the thing. Not long after, the petrol station in the background was razed and a tremendously ugly student accommodation block was put there. The irony of such ugliness was not wasted on some of the students and staff at Camberwell Art College next door – being built next to the eccentric looking ‘brutalist’ college, which in turn is built next to an earnestly provincial Arts & Crafts block. This new build, like so much other modern architecture, ignores its surroundings and just sits there as popular and congruous as a turd in a bed. There’s no sky left.
Cappuccino
Outside at Pullens.
Rainy day in Ryde, Isle of Wight 2011
On a rainy day, sat in the window of Chocolate Apothecary, Ryde Esplanade, Isle of Wight 2011.
Another postcard drawn on the same day here.
Two girls chatting, Café Tabac, Liverpool 1994
Café Tabac. This is the old Café Tabac. Diagonal tongue and groove backed highlight strips in deep red, table tops finished in cork that was always a bit sticky. French Onion soup with a massive chunk of dried bread by way of a crouton. There’re ghosts. It was a communication hub before we had mobile phones. You popped in after a day in town (usually cold and windswept, if not always saturated with rain) and there’d be someone you know with a story to tell.
I have drawn this café and occupants a thousand times. I have probably consumed more cups of coffee here than any other café anywhere. I just found this picture in an old sketchbook. There’s more to come.
It’s been done up now. They moved the counter/bar to the other side. The walls are bit bare and there’s definitely something lacking. Not knocking the new staff, but at that time, the staff were pretty full on characters and not hiding meekly out the way behind the counter – but somehow, it sort of is still the same Tabac too.