No really. It was time to start losing the past 2 years weight. Atlanta – I blame you. And also Pret A Manger chocolate and almond butter cookies, oh well, yes and their sundried tomato and egg breakfast baguette. And I suppose I should stop baking spicy cakes with cream frosting, so yeah, mostly just Atlanta.
I need a lot of sympathy. I limped to Mocca, totally like limped. This was limping from the surgery to the chemist, to find that the chemist didn’t open on time, and I had no interest in limping back home before limping back out again. People look at you when you limp – in a kind of, ‘time you left London, dear’ sort of a way.
And I ordered a coconut cappuccino which is already a direction that makes me nervous… but it was that or soya… just as I saw the quaint sign that said ‘minimum spend £5.’ (Me and Mocca, neither of us deserve to be in London) And I had already ordered, and there was no where else warm to wait, and there was an orange chocolate bread pudding square just sat all lonely in the glass counter…. Looking At Me.
So I thought, I have a limp, I deserve cake. But do you know what my brain said, it said ‘that’s not an excuse, carry on like this and nothing in your wardrobe will fit.’ I really thought that. My brain should get a certificate. I thought, ‘there will be another solution to this £5 conundrum, there really will be.’
But I looked. And there wasn’t. Just all those icing sugared italian pastry delights. And the cake was still looking at me. And the waitress was looking at me. And if their had been a queue, it would have been looking at me too. You know that look. And after all, the GP had just confirmed that I hadn’t got gout, so my unhealthy lifestyle was clearly doing me no real harm at all. AND I NEEDED TO SPEND FIVE POUNDS.
It was a terribly patient waitress who waited out me having this internal dialogue…. partially outloud.
As I sat down, (everyone was still looking at me, but because of the limp now) I thought. This was a mistake. That lonely bread pudding was clearly a last night left over and it will be horrible. But it wasn’t. It was gooey and sweet and everything that a chocolate orange bread pudding really should be. I finished every last crumb. I sipped my cappuccino which was surprisingly good for all that coconut and I perused my surroundings and I thought. Nice place this.
A quick note on that coffee. It was good coffee. And I am coffee fussy. Remember Fosters that Mocca replaced? That was bad coffee. The world has become an incrementally better place. In an extraordinarily localised fashion.
Do I regret this trip, which, as it turned out, due to some trouble in the Blackwall tunnel, still meant I had to limp home before limping back for painkillers? And was actually delicious and well served (Um, yeah. Kinda.)
(Don’t forget, you can preorder, my debut novel “Helen & the a Grandbees” here: