Someone said the Q word this morning. It isn’t allowed, and we all flinched as it spilled through lips and took off like a jester cloud, filling the whole place. It was gentle for a while, coffees, hot chocolates/what type/marshmallows/cream, bespoke teas, cakes, scones with jam and cream, blueberry bakewell, still warm, chocolate cake so full of chocolate as to dynamic the most miserable of souls into hopefulness. Peanut butter brownies, gluten free flapjacks, and so much more. WE are so much more, the team who work here and that’s a good thing because of the Q word earlier.

Around midday they came, and kept coming. The Washeroo was swamped with plates and cups, water glasses and pots and pans and all things kitchen. I don’t even know what half of this equipment is for but it does produce excellent lunches so I don’t really need to do more than to make sure all of it is thoroughly scrubbed. We welcomed dogs, children, families, couples and we never stopped at all, clearing, chatting, welcoming, delivering great food. I ducked out at times, just to escape the high piles of plates and cups and cutlery and pots and the endless parts of a new mixer. I changed the water many times in the deep sinks, so scurrilous did it become. I remember pulling back at one point and looking at the greasy brown swirl of it and thinking this. I don’t want anyone to think that I would ever countenance such water in my sink, not staying there like it was an ok staying there thing. I pulled the plug often.

The thing about running a very popular cafe is that the populous will come. They come because they hear it is a lovely welcoming space and that the food is healthy and fresh and prepared daily. Of course they do. And reputation will grow because people will recommend and new visitors will come because of that. I know that the owners of this cafe have got it so right. I also know that a business takes years to learn its wingspan. I remember growing a few and the early years were also cloudal. I remember doubt and judgment and loss of confidence. However, I am glad we kept going because now all around the world the work we did is used in protocols around sea-mammal research. There were clouds aplenty in the long years of that keeping on thing.

Home now and the sky is a big nudge of clouds. Not a flat sky, not lying down, not at all, but there are stratonimbus and a dwindle of cumulous and a load of feathering interruptions going on in the conversation. I hear it loudal. It moves all the time, shifts, blends, pulls back as if in outrage. Below, I have a baked potato and salad for supper.

The Q word? ‘I think it might be Quiet today”

Enough said on that.