Serendipitous Moments and Flat Caps!

NOTE: This is not an advertisement - No, I haven't gone over to The Dark Side, blogging for money and giftettes - It's a musing on serendipity and Moments of Magic and Wistfulness. Love and Loss. Life itself...

In fact, magic moments feature widely in my blog this week - Do pop back later this week and hear my tall tale of wild salmon wrestling.

I have shed the maudlin.

It ages me, so Goddess only knows what it does to you. You, who have the misfortune of reading my more weepy and seepy moments...

Look at this place, up there: Looks very cosy, doesn't it?

It's called Flat Caps Coffee, and this is Flat Cap Joe.

Joe's coffee shop is called Flat Caps after the flat cap which Joe likes to wear - Flat caps are very traditional attire in the North East of England... Heck, the man might even have a whippet, tucked away under a stool!

THIS is Joe's story. It's probably a heartening story of a leap into the void. Taking risks. Joe moved on from banking after having been made redundant to become a successful Barista in our city, Newcastle.

I'm very familiar with embarking on that kind of journey. Like Joe, I'm facing redundancy as the politicos are closing my office, I think you know -- And I would never have started to think about becoming a Psychotherapist if it were not for finding myself in this life-changing moment.

Joe tweets on Twitter @Flatcapjoe. He also does Facebook - Flat Caps Coffee House. So does la Fhina.

A while ago, I wrote a piece of froth concerning a much-loved coffee shop whose passing I mourned. HERE in my archive it languishes, like a shiny shell buried under sand...

And this is what Joe wrote on Twitter, after he found it:

"Flatcapjoe Joe Meagher

this lady's blog mentions what is now Flat Caps Coffee but was once called The Bookhouse awomanofnoimportance.com/2009/05/fika-m… via @Fhina"

Ah, the bloggy-starvation loveliness that is Twitter, with its insistent and haranguing demands that you write no more than 140 characters, including spaces... What true blogger can live within those means? (What's with the font now?! Bejaysus! Sorry...)

Anyhoo, this was what I had written about the Bookhouse, which now houses Flat Caps Coffee:

"Good fika place? (That would be coffee to us non-Swedes) The Bookhouse, Newcastle, before Central Perk (from Friends) ever existed - Beautiful, spiral staircase leading down from excellent bookshop to cafe hangout - I don't even know what this place is now - But The Bookhouse remains in the mind like a lost lover, whom you never really wanted to let go, and you never properly bid adieu to... "

So, my lost (fictional, probably Brazilian, for the coffee...) lover has been returned to me... I'm not sure what to say to him, now I'm married to GJ... Bit awkward that one!

But I might be giving Flat Caps Coffee my winter trade - Meeting with fabulous friends and clutches of colleagues, seated in what look to be its dainty little niches, quaffing beautifully prepared coffee like real Ladies Who Lunch do; musing on my future which will be I hope, just as bright as Flat Caps Coffee is...

I like serendipity. I needed to hear Joe's story, and meet the Coffee House and the Salmon this week.

Oddbox Soapbox...

I've noticed it's always quieter here in Blogland at weekends, mes amis...

People have lives to live, jobs to do, errands to run, chickens to choke (I'm jesting - I'm a vegetarian and we have kept pet chickies), and children to chastise...

I found this link on Friday when catching up with news on the BBC News Webpage...


It's a small collection of weird and wonderful news clippings, and there are a couple of laughs, oohs or wry smiles here, dependent upon your mien, moue or mood, methinks!

For those of you who were ever interested in my home-related window dilemma, you may be amazed, nay even astounded by the update...

Windows are now all in place, and sparkling bright - My living room is brighter and lighter than before, as the windows are larger for the frames are thinner, if that makes sense... We even struggled to hear the garden birds tweeting, and we're usually on first-name terms with the territorially chirping male blackbirds, and assorted finches. The lads were stars - They worked very hard, I did not even see them take a break! One of them even staggered up a ladder to repair my guttering, which clattered against the house cacophonously in anything other than a whisper of wind!

My letter boxes are restored and operational - I have even received some post - All of it of recyclable quality, but still I confess receiving it at all is a comfort...

Now I shall have to curb all of my usual slovenly, slatternly practices... You know, the ones I have fallen into while living this half-life with a home that, to be fair, saw better days when the Kaiser still lived...

I have a laundry room at the back of the house, at the Tradesman's Entrance to Crawford Mansions. Its three windows face directly on to the back lane behind our houses... This is where visitors and dwellers have sole access and egress to their homes...

Usually, this presents no probs - I scuttle into said laundry room... (Question: Why do we sometimes call this a 'Utility Room' in the UK - It sounds as if it belongs to war-time contingencies? Scriptor, Moannie, Jinksy, FF - I'll bet you know the answer to that one - You clever tykes you!) ...regularly to extract clean undies and tops from the dry laundry, straight out of the tumble drier, or even directly from the clothes horse, and change my vestments there and then... Voila, a transformation!

No-one but my family ever sees me en deshabille, for to hide the previous very shabby windows, I had hung some dark lilac, densely patterned voile curtains from my previous home... To see anything out of them was something of a Mister Magoo experience, to be fair!

Now, I have reached new levels of potential public exposure, I will have to behave myself... comport myself in a more ladylike fash', mes amis, at least until I have fitted some functioning and pretty blinds! Tant pis, I shall live!

Anyhoo, back to the cliplette... There you will see beautiful baby meerkats... Everybody: Ahhhh!


A hard rock loving pensioner... Some financial gurus in Frankfurt dressing down at work to bring levity to some very serious business...

(I love Frankfurt, such a cosmopolitan city, a great music scene and the birthplace of beloved Goethe...


Hardly imagine he would recognise the place these days, talk about Sturm und Drang! Golly gosh!)

And there's more - There are some models at Fashion Week, struggling with their high heels on the catwalk...




Why do designers do that, do you think ? I understand that they obtain shoes for their all models (just like the clothes) in one size only, regardless of how big the models' tootsies are...

Another form of body fascism, and torture for women, in my opinion...

I've seen Sticktoria Beckham do the same, cramming her size 5's, or whatever they are in reality, into a teensy pair of stilettoes with a point the like of which was last seen on the nose of the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz - You know, the one that popped her clogs under the house!

And then, she has to hang onto her children just to keep herself tottering upright... I know you've noticed, and it's not just me going all byotchy on your bum... (That's a translation from the American, by the way...)



See?

The clip is only around 4 minutes long, about the time you would need to boil yourself an egg for breakfast - Always, free range and organic, j'espere...

And here's something just as exciting as a boiled egg!



I'm going to tootle off myself now, before I get accused of not being nice... My bad; I protect my reputation for niceness like the gleaming jewel that it is...

Nice, in my opinion, is a very underrated quality in folk, and that gives me such sadness...

One last tale to regale... The staples were swiftly despatched yesterday by one of the nurses of the practice, in the same room of doom in which my incident first was triggered... I was reluctant to go near the offending doctor's couch, and so was straddling a glass trolley on castors (probably just as dodgy, but the nurse was wielding a special instrument to remove the staples, which I had given her, as I'd been carrying it in my handbag since leaving hospital where I was given it by the nurses there specifically for this purpose...

I had been introduced to the nurse, who was about to use the staple remover, by a trainee nurse who had asked whether she could sit in on the spectacle, so she could learn... I was feeling a little nervous at this point, and proclaimed that I had no probs with her sitting in whatsoever, but I'd rather someone with more experience actually remove the clips!

I felt bad about this, but I have allowed many a fledgling practitioner to practice on me in the past... (A very vivid story, which I shall never write, now springs to mind, involving me, pre-Grizz's arrival on the scene, agreeing to a nurse at the Family Planning Clinic in Inverness, when she asked whether a student could observe the procedure, and I then found meself in an interesting position, under a strong light, while a veritable coachload of medical students paraded through the room!!!)

So I am now 100% less metal content than I was on Friday morning, and I am beginning to think I might get through all this...

Alors, salut mes amis; A demain! Mwah!



Now, Marilyn - There was a real beauty... with so little of the hoo-hah and hullaballoo of these days...