The Cafe Cat: Memories

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Tuesday, 18 November 2014

Peanut Butter Cookies | Celia's Saucer

These beauties are just perfect to suit a late afternoon. Coarse and cakey, salty-sweet and with a gentle crust, they pair well with a tall, cold glass of milk, the sofa and a good book.

Sunday, 3 November 2013

Barcelona- City Ghosts

I love city ghosts.

Faintly feathering about their shimmering way, slipping through doorways, turning street corners, shuddering in reflections or sometimes so brash as to blink back at you atop the still presence of whatever's in your glass- water, vermouth or wine- warped by a tilt and shattered by a sip, these fleeting, fluttering glimpses of the past.

As I was sitting writing this at a small cafe in Barcelona, they danced around me in the daylight and I was not frightened but dazed and wistful at the sight of such wisps and such whirls- carried away by their smoky lure, following them on the ends of my lashes.

Ghosts keep me company on my lonesome jaunts, from slipping, shadowy sights on corners or streets huffing with hectic puffs; indistinguishable layers of memories, or were they once dreams?

There he goes- speeding past on his bicycle in a brilliant blur, a gleeful determination on his face or shuffling awkwardly, pulling his tired body along for another long day, leaving her behind.

There I am, even myself, wandering aimlessly, looking for something but not sure quite what- my present self whispers a quiet hello but she never hears it. Not once.

And there we all are. My friends and I, on a warm evening, the light of the oak-scented bodega illuminating our transparent, smiling faces with a space to my side, that's always empty when it shouldn't be.

These demi-present spirits are my faded stories in vision.

I read them one more time, smile softly and close the book firmly.

Friday, 25 October 2013

Barcelona- A Dark Love Story

I hadn't planned to see you but knew that at some point, I would be drawn in your direction by an irresistible lull; the force of habit so very much ingrained into my limbs that would lead me your way. And lead me they did, in one heavy tumble.

There you were in that usual spot of yours, so casually splayed were your long, thick legs and your hair swept flirtatiously across your browned brow, your head bowed over your clumsy, rough hands as you peered at them in the afternoon sun distractedly.

I regarded you with a mixture of cool contempt but when you realised it was me as you squinted against the rays that peeked over the rooftops, you bounded to your big feet and threw open your arms, your smile betraying careful delight against a tentative trepidation. I forgot all of a sudden how very dismissive and unkind you could be and moved to your warmth obligingly with hellos and how have you beens.

You placed two quick kisses on my cheeks, your tall hulk towering above me and blotting out the light, enshrouding us in a dark memory that spoke of a time when I was plain mad for you.

I pulled away, my eyes not meeting yours, ashamed to feel that old jolt, and began the rituals of what I hope sounded like disinterested small talk, my hands betraying me as they shook ever so slightly, like a subtle breeze that ruffles a rabbit's flank when caught dead in the headlamps; an unwelcome movement in a painfully frozen scene.

Looking squarely at you now, the intensity from your treacle-brown eyes threatened to overwhelm me as I licked my lips and formed words that I couldn't really hear but proceeded to pour forth.

My heart beat against my ribs, beckoning to my ears to listen to my head and not fall into the patterns and habits my body had lain prey to so many years before when I had first held your mischievous, boyish gaze and knew that our story had started and that I was in trouble- nothing but deliciously awful trouble.

Jerking into action as the drumming reached my consciousness, the floodgates of reason opened and rushed into my mind- enough to break the spell.

Enough was enough of this charade, I thought as I shook off that cloak of familiarity, shattering your hold over me. That is all it ever was- the insanity of a love-starved body, craving yours. It had only needed time and distance to quite distinctly see that it had all been nothing and as I took a few steps back from you, you were both illuminated and destroyed in your beautiful image.

How funny the desires of the body can be, reminding us that we're just animals, really. Animals that strain to fuck, bite and betray in mercy to our instinctive lust; our only difference as humans is the knowledge of our better, moral judgement grappling against something deeper and more savage within.

We were just animals back then. You were a feverish carnal spell- a dark, beautiful bat that cloaked me in heavy drapes, drawing distractions from a life that I felt I was barely living, just waiting in the summer heat for my flight out of Barcelona. You gave me the attention I so distinctly lacked from the boy who had promised to love me but against the blindness of circumstance, had failed spectacularly.

And yet however broken that spell now may be that my senses have been restored and I see you more as a oafish Iberian pig, you were also a small saviour from something much bigger. Your lure broke my personal catastrophe into morsels I could digest and have the tenacity to claw my out of a situation that might otherwise have been my undoing.

You made heartbreak seem easy; you were a delicious salve on my wound; a book bursting with words when I was lonely and a muse for many, many scribblings.

You bat-pig boy, I don't suppose you'll ever know how I used you to save myself and how seeing you now, the final flare of those last, dying embers warm the thought that you could have been a giant mistake that I thankfully never, or ever made.

Sunday, 21 July 2013

My 27th Year- The Sun and the Moon

And so walk I did, right from autumn into winter- a kaleidoscope of colours flickering their final fancy before crumbling from the trees and crumpling underfoot.

The orchards hung heavily with the sweet scent of rotten apples and woodsmoke, carried by the first cold stirs of the northern wind that waltzed with the last of the warm sun. Little were we to know then that it would blow all the way through into April,

For a long while, I felt numb. I knew full well there was a cauldron of unspent emotion inside but under a tightly sealed lid. The quiet, distant rumble of a rolling boil audible only in my ears at bed at night as I lay watching the moon with Buddy tucked under one arm. He would rise and fall on my chest and purr quietly as I remembered to breathe, just as I remembered to keep putting one foot in front of the other, I told myself. By the dead of night, Buddy would eventually be roused and called by the creatures of the countryside and abruptly squawking his ragged meow, he'd slink off out the open window, leaving me to fall into a restless sleep.

Many days and weeks passed like this, waking early with the sun and crawling into bed under a moon that had followed me through the orchard at dusk, as we took Bruce for his evening jaunt.

Under these moons and these suns I passed, quietly easing myself into my new life and trying to find a foothold, which wasn't there and wouldn't be for months to come. New opportunities would manifest as quickly as they would disappear, from jobs, to a place of my own to live and even to new friends who didn't quite turn out to be friends after all. Disappointments soared hand in hand with delights in rapid succession, like eyelids beating to a discordant tune. Every morning, however, kept returning to my window, as did the night and every sun and moon, and so my feet kept moving, one in front of the other... continually leading me away from my old life and into a new.

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

(Thanks, Stanley Kubrick)

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Monday, 15 July 2013

My 27th Year- We Walk

And so there I was again- back to square one after a long learning interval and I wasn't quite sure where to start. I only knew that I had to keep moving, little steps because if I stood till, I feared I would be overwhelmed. No job, no place to live and no life that I recognised as my own anymore.

After a brief stint at my mother's, I packed my bags once more and headed to where I knew best.

It was late September and on the train journey I idly cast my eyes over the green Kentish countryside and its familiarity was a comfort in which I delighted. This time, however, I wouldn't be in the very thick of the city but rather, an idyllic nook, removed far from any town- in a fortnight I had gone from the very humming heart of Barcelona, with every conceivable convenience to hand, to a place where over an hour's round trip on foot for a bottle of milk was to be standard- no more dreamy takeaway morning coffees or late night coriander buying, that was for sure.

As I lay my bag on the bed that was to be one of mine for the coming months, a rusty chirrup came from beneath my feet and a leap and a bound later there was my dearest and weirdest cat pal, Buddy. With notes of desperate excitement that I had come back to him he pressed his cheek up against mine and rubbed black snot across my brow. "Why is your snot always black, Buddy?" I said and he answered with a feverish croak. Seeing no other choice but to scoop him up and prop him over my shoulder where he could bury his face in my neck, I left him to his curious ways and together we padded downstairs into the garden where Bruce the sleek but troubled greyhound and my Vicki were waiting in the early autumn evening. "What should we do now?" I sighed, placing Buddy gently on the grass. Grabbing Bruce's lead she simply replied with what would be my answer to everything for weeks to come.

"We walk."

Thursday, 4 July 2013

My 27th Year- Leaving Barcelona

My first month at 27 was perhaps the most uncomfortable of all and also the final of my two years in Barcelona. I see it now as a fork in the road leading me onto a totally different path, albeit one that ran parallel to my past, but one that would be different this time- that would take me where I needed to go.

The humidity was constantly wrapped around me in a balmy shroud, its sticky breath on my neck. I had quit my job to spend my last weeks with my soon to be ex-boyfriend, a stab at quality time after months of snatching a poor handful of hours on Sundays- however, was he anywhere to be seen? Of course, there were more important things than me once again and so I found myself with long, hazy days of my own company stretching ahead and that ever gnawing sense of disappointment.

I sat writing in the company of stray cats in the shade of the beautifully deserted Poble Nou Cemetery, I went for long, winding walks in the old Jewish quarter of the city and spent mornings drinking coffee and smiling shyly at a boy I so longed to kiss because he seemed to be the only person in the world that noticed me, a feeling that I thrived on. A cold juice and wander at La Boqueria always restored my better senses and I would take long, restless naps in the coolest nook of my flat, squirming against the stone wall to try and abate my rising temperature and hide from the soaring blue sky and blazing sun.

Despite the heat, the city was my dearest friend at this time and so when the time finally rolled around to leave, I was heartbroken, in more ways than I can describe. Utterly defeated. I cried gently as I said goodbye to the boy who had forgotten how to love anyone, even himself, and sobbed hard on the flight until I fell into a slumber. When I awoke, the plane was just touching down. Stepping off the craft, the familiar, cold air of England greeted me and the sky was heavy hung with clouds. It was home but not a home I knew anymore. It felt like an old friend that looked the same but had dramatically changed inside. "This will take some getting used to" I muttered to myself, but little was I to know how very long it would be before I found home again.

Sunday, 23 June 2013

Under Our See

I remember the day I discovered the lull of the tide. We were standing there, my father and I, in the late afternoon at the water's edge, carefully scouring the small stretch of speckled, gravelly shore for smooth, flat pebbles with which to skim the water's skin.

Little boats were knock-knocking, their echoes rocking in the harbour and the distant squawking chime of seagulls punched the ragged sky, which was streaked with clouds and hemmed by an inky grey, tugging inwards at the corners. The air had a salty sting, coming over us in haughty gusts laced with the thrash and thrive of life under our see, engulfed in far reaching waters, which started at our toes, sharp and cold at first and slowly, almost imperceptibly, flushed and swilling at our ankles like swishing shoals of fish, the space between us and the craggy sea defence growing slighter by the minute.

"We had better head back" my father said, nodding at the water that had now pushed us up near enough against the wall and at the rest of the Gurteen family who were dawdling overhead, leaning against the hard rusted railings, their cheeks rosy and hair drunk and tousled by the breeze. "You had better come up quickly" called my mother and as we mounted the wet steps, it seemed to me as if the sea swelled forth, careening ahead and laid itself like a heavy blanket, erasing what had befallen moments before- the sea waits for no man and hides away a secret world, which is both exciting and dangerous at the same time.

We scuttled through the narrow streets that slowly wound up towards our little townhouse, that we had called home for the week- a home away from home. My hand in grandma's, I craned my neck to catch glimpses of the steely grey waters that had rolled up to meet the town's front of Dartmouth, as if it might pour in and swallow us whole but, rather, through the gaps of the stone cottages, I could see the sea sigh and fall short of its almighty swoop, stopping simply to lap and lull against the frontiers.

We let ourselves in through the front door just as the slightest pitter patter of rain began to fall. Clambering onto the end of my brother's bed, we sat there, the two of us, our heads resting on the rough, wooden sill and peered out over the rooftops, past the bell tower of the church, which had earlier called to wake us.

To our left lay the waters from hence we had just come, the waves sighing contentedly as they met with walls and rolled back out into all that was under our see, into all of that powerful, potent world that is under the sea.

*Pictures not my own but sourced from a broken link within Pinterest- please contact if they are yours and you would like citation.

*Rental cottages in Devon provided by Home Away.

Thursday, 2 May 2013

Dear Celia

Dear Celia,

Truthfully, I know not where to start this letter, which I feel as I have been writing for ten long years. I cannot recall the last time we spoke, or at least a 'we' where the conversation flowed in both directions- to and fro- and not just from the mouth of a naive young girl who knew not what to say to a woman who could no longer hear the words of the living, but rather the echoes of a dimension we could neither see nor reach. Where all I could do was offer you another jelly baby and look into your sad, lost eyes and wonder what you were thinking in that room and that bed that wasn't your home.

I think about you everyday, carrying you on the middle finger of my left hand, my thumb curled and pressed against the cool emerald as if to keep it warm or seek comfort from the only concrete things I have left of you, as if my thoughts sometimes aren't enough and a touch can reach you wherever you may be... as if wearing your rings means that you're something more than just a thought; a memory.

You are nowhere and yet everywhere that I want to see you, if I look. In a piece of turkish delight, a cornish wafer or the lyrics of a song you loved. It seems I remember so little and so very much of you at that- who measures what we remember and of what importance it holds? I couldn't tell, if asked, the full story of your life, for I knew you only as my grandma from the eyes of a girl who didn't need to know your political persuasion or your thoughts on the war. And so it is that I think of you in wilted spring flowers, in the breadcrumbs while making biscuits and when my hands are cold, desperately seeking yours to make them warm again.

Of course, it is these things about you that I wish I knew now I'm more than a girl. What was it like to have six brothers? How did you feel all alone with your first child, wondering if your husband would return in one piece, or return at all? When that man, my grandfather, did come to pass in 1982, what did it provoke within you? You told me how you had gone to your bedroom where he was resting and he raised his arm suddenly, as if to say something profound and then, as if he'd changed his mind, decided to simply die instead, never again to utter another word. How did this change you? And, when you yourself came to pass and your mind broke free from the shackles of your cloudy dementia, did you feel peace at last?

Who were you? Who are you, my grandmother, and so much more that I never did, and never will, truly know as a woman?

Monday, 8 April 2013

The Station Walk

Despite the bitter, haughty huff of the eastern wind that flurries and unfurls its icy fold, by darkness and by day, my window sits slightly ajar. That cold air waltzes on my face as I dream and curls itself around my nostrils as if to say "spring isn't quite here yet".

Each season must burn its final flame before it is extinguished, lest we forget of it in the midst of others. This wind is the winter's haunting promise, as is the vibrant palette of autumn or the melted butter sunsets of summer. Its smouldering ash whips my knuckles and nose and brings embers to my cheeks, but spring is almost here and the winter must relinquish its icy grasp.

I bear this in mind on days when my heart is dark. In my currently messy, small life, where things are all skeewiff and there is little continuity, I sometimes struggle to process things and get myself into a tizzy. I know that when I look back on this time next year, despite the highs and lows, there will be one thing that I will remember and hold dear as my saving grace and that is the long walk I take to the station each week.

As I walk from rural to urban, I rub my hands together briskly, brave my face for the chilly blast and watch the cusp of spring battle gorgeously to take hold. The fight is growing weary, as are we all, and the days must and will grow longer. I hear the rambunctious rooks as they caw for twigs and territory and the madding flirting-jerk of wings as they beat and battle. In the lane, trickles of water's icy thaw run gleefully away under the thick, felty pleat of the sky mirrored in the woolly coats of the new lambs, whose mothers all turn their eyes to me as I pass as if to say keep walking, dear.

And walk I have. Through autumn into winter and now through winter into spring. I have watched as the trees wept their leaves and the leaves in turn changed to rot and ice underfoot and where now is a smattering of primroses. Regardless of my mood, within the miles of this walk, my mind passes from sadness to elation to all sorts of currents of emotion along with a soundtrack of songs that are dear to me. I sing them loudly because no one is around to hear except the first bees and the blackbirds.

The station walk is just a necessity in my day to day life, an element of routine you could say, but one that pulls my head back down to earth and reminds me that life itself is one long walk; fixing my head fast to my shoulders and levelling my waltzing mind with each bound and step.

If I just keep walking, singing and changing with the seasons, I know I'll reach my destinations, no matter how long the path.

Monday, 25 March 2013

A Cat's Life #3

Another week gone by in our waiting game for the spring to arrive and in my personal quest for world domination. In between little meetings here and there, I had time for a touch of river dwelling and coffee drinking, as always.

At Bramleys, we had a fantastic secret Speak Easy event with live music, special cocktails, a roulette table and plenty of candlelight. If you're from the Canterbury area, be sure to check out Hundredclub Bramleys on Facebook for further events.

Easter is almost here, as is evident in the Madame Oiseau chocolate shop- look at these treats!

Elsewhere in Canterbury, people gathered for the enthronement of our new Archbishop but also in defence of NHS cuts. We watched it all from a secret space with a jacket potato.

And finally on Sunday, we wandered down the long lane to the Calico Cat Craft Fair at Chilham Village Hall... you can read more about it here.

We had a great time drinking tea and picking up little pieces from some of Kent's cutest crafters.

Enough about me though! What about you? How was your week and what happened in your city?

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