Lunch

Alhaurin looks fresher, cleaner, somehow. The first sunny day in weeks. Cold, especially as the clouds cross the sun. There's enough blue for jackets for an entire Navy, however. I'm in Café 119, which used to be Pick Nick's, before it went under recently, unable to bear the weight of a heavy pun on the then owner's name. Two nice, optimistic, forty-something ladies from Rochdale or Bolton have been smiling through the windows at the downpour ever since; the strain of keeping the corners of their mouths up visible in the crow's feet around their eyes.

But today is better, I'm having a coffee there for a start. A family of four in short trousers and puffa-jackets have arrived on the terrace, bickering over whether to eat lunch or have a beer. The boy looks about 15 at most. I can see a singularly unattractive muffin-top between mum and daughter's respective crop-tops and trouser waistbands. It's not quite cold enough to zip up their puffas, evidently.

Front of house - Maureen, I think it is - bustles out with notepad and pen ready to take the family's order. Mum does all the talking, barking their requirements before Maureen gets a chance to say good morning, what would you like or do you think the UN will agree to a no fly zone? Maureen's smile doesn't exactly slip but it slides a little and the crow's feet relax a little too. Perhaps it's the accent, an estuarine twang, but in an instant the North-South divide gets imported like all the best things we Gambas bring from England. So, a family of Essex Geezers most likely. Miss Geezer could be anything from 16 to 30 and she'll turn into her mum before she reaches 40, for sure. Geezer Boy looks sullen and even wears his shorts half way down his arse like a boy from the 'hood in some upstate penitentiary doing 5-9 for a drugs deal. Dad looks bald, beaten and barely alive. Mrs Geezer has the look of a woman who's lost the joy of being one, a long time ago.

They're just the other side of the glass from me, and I feel like they're a world away. I can't believe I come from the same hemisphere, never mind the same country. I'm waiting for a student. Sometimes I give an English class in one of the Brit-run places: the student orders the coffee and we talk about the menu, often the better students will engage the owner or waitress in conversation. In summer, in better years, we'll just eavesdrop and talk about what we've heard. In Spanish, naturally.

Maureen rushes out. She deals 2 all-day breakfasts (extra sausage free) and 'fish, chips and beans twice' off the arm. I reckon she's probably pretty good at waiting tables and that bodes well for their business. I hope so, they'll need all the expertise and luck they can muster. The Little Englanders attack their food. They've finished in 20 minutes. 20 minutes of complete silence. Mum's plate is empty, only the pattern left on it. Dad's left the beans, perhaps under previous advice from his ever-lovin'. Essex Boy has taken a single bite out of every component of his all-day breakfast including the free extra sausage. His sister's plate looks like Francis Bacon out of Jackson Pollock, but I don't think she's actually eaten anything. Everyone gets up to go, Mum comes inside to pay. I see the other three are almost down at the Estanco before Mum reaches the counter. Still, she'll find them, they'll be emptying the shelves of Silk Cut in time for Easy Jet's Thursday flight to Stansted.

20 minutes for lunch. I think about the last time I had lunch with someone. 2 hours. Feeding my brain with talk, as much as my stomach with food. I know that I used to be a 20-minute man, in another life. Someone else's life, it seems, now.