Sad Café…

There are two cafes near From Beer To Paternity Towers.

One is a good old-fashioned greasy spoon called the Station Café where me, the missus and the boy sneak off to whenever we need good old-fashioned stodge – and the other is a place called Graceland that does bistro-standard stodge (organically reared bacon and eggs, lentil and spinach quiche, fair trade mocha-focker-chinos, etc) for the glut of yummy mummies who now populate the wider environs of Kensal Green.

We had friends over at the weekend so we visited the latter – and I have to report it was bizarre.

For a start whenever the place has more than about six customers the serving and kitchen staff go into an absolute panic. Food arrives late, wrong dishes turn up and some orders just get forgotten. The food is actually half-decent but it just isn’t worth the drama that it takes to order it and the wait for it to be delivered.

But the really bizarre thing is that Graceland also offers a whole other world of middle-class living for those who frequent it on a regular basis. There are children’s drama workshops, baby yoga and baby massage, bag-making workshops, weaving classes and all manner of pseudo-arty bollocks alongside the ever-popular build-your-own-local-serial-killer classes.

OK. I made the last one up but if they did have that class it would create a vegan, peace activist serial killer in flip-flops who only butchered arms manufacturers in a very polite way.

It’s a horrible nightmare world of middle-classness where you can get a Peruvian nasal flute workshop more quickly than you get a cup of coffee – even though the primary job of the café is to serve coffee.

To be quite frank I couldn’t wait to be out of there. But I now know that if I end up in hell it will be a place like Graceland peopled by women called Tabatha or Jemimah who have children called Moonstone, Treebark or Stetson – and I’ll be their servant.

In the words of Prince ‘I’ve seen the future and it will be.’ Probably...