Spaced out

A week ago, at 9:30 am, my favourite coffee house was packed.

To the right of the entrance, a ring of about fifteen older people clustered around a tiny table.

They kept coming to my favourite side of the coffee house to purloin chairs, as more and more of them arrived. I put my coat on the floor to accommodate them, and thought grumpily about the two old ladies seated at my favourite table, in my favoured chairs (the old rounded ones that don't cripple me) gazing at their phones, before finally getting down to chatting with each other.

I rather missed them this morning. A week later, and half the tables had been taken off the patio, so that those who did dare to stay to drink their coffee from cardboard cups (no china cups or plates allowed today) would be able to sit the prescribed six feet apart.

I dared to stay, taking a table in the wrong end of the coffee shop, having lifted down one of the older and more comfortable chairs from the stack on the bench, where, up until yesterday, the laptop users perched next to the power outlets. I was not quite six feet from the man to my right, but he was on a stool by the window ledge, facing away from me, so I imagine I was safe enough.

I made out my bullet journal, setting up April. One goal for that month: "Survive". Couldn't face making any others. I wrote in the dates and days, as you do with a bullet journal, something about the process, I guess. I wrote in Easter, and wondered how Easter will be with all the churches closed, and then I remembered the Resident Fan Boy plans to be out of town for my birthday - provided travel is possible. To my astonishment, my eyes welled with tears. I put them away.

As I left the proprietor wiped down my table with disinfectant and thanked me for coming.