Cafe society, where art thou?

I tried out a new coffee shop. It was not my standard

Hello again dear readers. I have had a horrible and mysterious virus and been unable to type anything more coherent than “blood test 9am” for several weeks.

I wrote this on one of the many false summits when I thought I was better. It took me several hours and I needed a nap afterwards. On rereading, I still had no clue whether or not it made any sense.

Now that normality beckons I have tided up the tenses and deleted the most egregious repetition. I have more thoughts on matcha but these will have to wait until another time.

At last, a new coffee shop in my neighbourhood. Actually, newish. After pawing the ground for it to open, it naturally took me a couple of months to actually make it through the door.

This was partly to save myself from crushing disappointment. What I want is an Anniesland version of the round table at the Algonquin. Peeping through the window of Annies on the Corner, I sensed Oban waterfront circa 2017. A strong it’s-raining-and-there-is-nothing-to-do-until-the-ferry-comes energy.

Yet somehow this morning felt like the moment to try it for myself. Birkenstocks, laptop, Anya Hindmarch tote bag (Waitrose version)? Good to go.

I want the kind of coffee shop where customers carry laptops in insufferable bags

The promise delivered by the sage exterior shrivelled and died at the front door. This place was blander than baby food. No dogs. Or plants. The internal beams had been covered and plastered, the bricks covered with grey brick-effect wallpaper. All light fittings appeared to have been sourced from Dunelm.

Brown, coffee-adjacent liquid arrived, slopping into the saucer. Not something I would drink through choice.

I, alone among the customers, had work to do. A sweet but slightly gormless young woman fished the router out of the cupboard and wote the name of the Sky box and its 11-digit code on her waitress pad.

It did not work.

I know it’s terrible but it’s the only photo I took. I was ill, OK

I was paying £3 to use my own data and drink something hot with slight notes of ashtray.

Contemporary life flashed in and then left again. Two young women with bare midriffs left with iced drinks in see-through cups. Brown, suggesting coffee, rather than modish pale green, although there is a whole matcha menu. Biscoff was everywhere. Several cakes featured pistachio, another was topped with hundreds and thousands.

A woman in a pink cardigan with a giant daisy on the sleeve finished her cappuccino. There was a tide mark of chocolate around her chunky yellow cup.

A maw, sister and daughter were having brunch. The solids looked more enticing than the liquids. There was some kind of pale liquid, possibly green tea, in the kind of perspex cup and saucer last seen containing frothy coffee in Cambeltown around 1975.

As in fancier places, there were shelves of expensive little things to buy. An older couple considered artisan hot chocolate, hand-baked dog treats and empty space. Nonplussed, she zipped up her floral pacamac, took the old boy’s arm and left.

On the bright side, a dog arrived.

This place has been a year in the making. It was previously a smaller roll shop with aspirations and Live Laugh Love decor. This is a larger unit and clearly wants to drag the neighbourhood - residential, bisected with a thundering main road and the city’s most confusing traffic interchange - upmarket.

Its bones are good. It’s a pretty corner spot with two walls of windows and some greenery blocking the busy road on one side. The ceiling is high, there’s room for a separate kitchen.

The dowdy neighbours should be easy to outclass: vapes, nail bars, hairdressers, a large betting shop, two chazzas and the world’s most plangent Poundland. The nearest pub is a Wetherspoons. The second nearest is an incongruous suburban situation hidden behind a petrol station.

Greggs aside, the main competition is a Costa Drive-Thru in the car park of Morrisons.

There is actually a really excellent place for coffee and brunch tucked off the main drag a couple of doors down. It has real sourdough, proper coffee, shakshuka, all that. But also queues, extremely limited opening hours, tiny uncomfortable chairs and defiant this-is-not-Greggs pricing.

I felt like the only customer who would rather be having sweetcorn fritters next door. Everyone else looked delighted with their Biscoff lattes and mini ramekins of coleslaw. The menu tolerates modern fads such as halloumi and avocado but has baked potatoes with mayonnaise-heavy fillings and unironic toasties at its heart.

So I sat there, tapping disconsolately, pining for a waiter with an ironic moustache bringing single estate brew in a hand-thrown cup. Please, let me glimpse a young person with a very short fringe in the kitchen making an unexpected flavour of soup. Humour me with a knowing wifi password, maybe coffee_wanker.

Being old is bad enough without the company of other ancients in their anoraks and fleeces, having actual conversations, eating buns, reading actual newspapers. Have they no emails to answer?

And then I felt bad, taking up a table and writing mean things while people who would love to come in for a cajun chicken salad (£10.95) couldn’t get a seat.

All was not lost. A woman in platform Doc Martens took away an Americano. Another, with hand tattoos and a scary dug, was not far behind. But for the foreseeable future, I will take my laptop to the library.

My high viral load has also got in the way of my theatre reviewing commitments. I went to see one show and could not formulate a single cogent thought afterwards. Not good. By the time Bard in the Botanics began I was at least able to sit up straight and pay attention. Although I managed not miss the plot switch up where Oberon, rather than Titania, fell in love with Bottom. Oh well.