The Cafe was bajonkers today. It seems to be a Wednesday thing, although I imagine, now that most of Englandshire is on holiday here in big vehicles with kids and dogs and a tiny wish they were on a beach in Spain, that Wednesday will not be the only bajonkers day. Serving excellent coffees, an abundance of quirky teas and hot chocolates, a fairground of colourful high rise cakes of many flavours and combinations, people thronged. In fact, there was so much thronging that all inside tables filled over and over again, thus sending those made of tough stuff out into the spitspot of west coast rain. Those ones ate fast, with good humour and in rainproof jackets. It was all smiles, it was, even when the queue was long enough to cause me pause on my return from sourcing more brown sugar lumps and another bag of ethnically farmed (and salted) hot chocolate nubbits, with a lot of excuse me’s.

What all this meant to me as the small and salty washerwoman was a deal of dishwasher management. It’s a great wee thing, maw of a young whale and a very hot wash in five. A purging, apparently, and one insisted upon by the gods of cafe standards. However, I have discovered that this delightful washhelper has her, or his, limitations. He/she is crap at sourdough mix. We all are crap at something, yes, but this dough takes the prize. Soaking, endless, stuck bits, concrete, drain-blocking, spectacular. The bread is gorgeous, so that makes it all ok.

I did notice, pausing more as my arms disappeared into the depths of a mammoth sink, the water hot as Hades, a rise of wordage in my gullet. Such an unattractive word. Picture me, in this cocoon, although I doubt the butterfly bit, surrounded in steam, endless dishes coming at me, and I mean endless. I noticed how I say nothing, just keep moving, keep working. I also notice how my co-workers, decades younger than I, do expel breath, plosive, after a huge rush of soups, quiches, pita with hummus, cakes, scones with this, without that, as they speak out the phew of a break in pressure, pulling back into the fricative when another customer appears and smiley welcome slaps on. They are so professional. And, then I wonder at myself, all quiet in the Washeroo, no plosives, not even a fricative. I know, of course I do. This is training, this is my learning. You just don’t expel anything young lady, not ever, and there is a huge weight of pressure in just that admonition. My generation, my time.

I love the new.