It has long been a dream to own a café. I spent most of my twenties either working in one or tucked up in the corner reading a book- hiding away and yet found by the people who sat around me, in their own hiding places.
It is actually a combined aspiration with my sister, so similar are our interests but so different the way we precisely see them, that I wonder if we could ever own one together?
For me, the café is a safe haven- it is both inspiration and salvation, escape and immersion, peace and potential. It is a wonderful contradiction and its own culture- mini nests of modern community in a world where the 'self' is its own religion.
While I won't be owning a café for a while, or likely ever, I started the Café Cat in 2010 merely as a portal to capture cafés across Spain as I wandered from place to place, alone, but looking for a degree of company- seeking a window to the world that I could document with pen and paper and then translate online.
When the national bus services went on strike, I found myself not only stuck in a sleepy city but with a project leading nowhere. Some things happen for a reason. And so began a long hike to the UK, to the USA, to Barcelona, to Kent and finally to London. The Café Cat came with me but without that original objective, it became an unfurling narrative of however I was feeling. It became whatever was in my notebook.
And I quite like it that way.
However, now that I am here in London and with a forecast that reads I might very well be here for a while, it can't hurt to start new projects as much as it can't hurt to dream out loud.
Stay tuned for cafés, the city and its sprawl of stories and, of course, obligatory cats.
