It is warm here. In this coffee shop. The afternoon light streaming through the large windows, caressing counters, then failing, retreating, as the deepening shadows grasp out from the back of the room.
Deepening shadows across the varnished wood of these tables, across the little sugar pots with their little tops... the blue ceramic mugs and saucers, the mugs smudged with stains of coffee. Polished cutlery coruscating. Flanged steel girders bearing the weight of the room, shining under black paint. Hanging lights. Customers congregated in small groups, voices susurrating gently, hair flicked back, mugs brought to lips, hats removed, hats kept on.... Or customers by themselves, plugged into screens that shine in bursts of colour and behind the colour reflect vaguely back the self. Headphones. Wireless buds. Notebooks opened, notebooks closed. Phones picked up, just for a moment, just to check this one tiny thi...
The textured grey of the sky still bright, but the sun, somewhere behind, arcing inexorably lower, the remembered promise of dusk. Evening approaching, creeping into the edges of awareness, as of a task you are not yet starting but know you'll be getting round to soon.
Store fronts across the road emptying, or already closed. Taxis rolling by with less frequency now. The drinkers spilling from their bars, the forty-somethings from the surrounding villages, from Kiveton Park, Shireoaks, from Mexborough, from Rotherham, from Worksop and the splayed tangle of the Mosborough townships. The women thick with makeup, the men large of bicep and belly. Disgorging themselves from Lloyds and Yates's, clomping and swaying on heels, raising Barbour collars over crisp Ben Shermans, winding in spread-thin packs towards the station, the caterwauling voices unable to fully distract from the thought of the darkening sadness of home.
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