C H R O N I C L E

Mrs Monk’s

Would-Be Diary

Tables and Chairs

26 May 2006

Everywhere you go these days people are putting tables and chairs on sidewalks and calling it a “Café”. 

Up and down the sidewalks of Leigh on Sea, where I occasionally wander and take the air, I am forever tripping into tables and chairs, where I am expected to sit down and have coffee, éspresso, café latté, cappuccino or pretend versions of the above. It’s one thing to sit down voluntarily to have a drink (or cake); it’s quite another matter to be obstructed and assaulted by outdoor furniture.

Outdoor picnic paraphernalia is just a small problem for me, but I’m also thinking about the old man with a white stick, and OAP’s in electric wheel chairs, not to mention children on leads and misguided blind dogs.

And somehow, these cafés are not quite real, particularly when they are found outside a garden centre, or a travel agents, and then we are also faced with that fake éspresso served in gas stations.

There is a genuine café society in Paris but the sidewalks of Leigh should be returned to the peripatetic.

Shoestringonline.co.uk

Story and Pictures Sara Monk