Finding a Convial Café

I had intended to do more work in Guildford, but finding a space to do it in proved tricky. So many spaces are heavily private or commercialised here. The only real common public areas are the High Street itself (which is busy with happy consumer drones) and perhaps the public library.

For some reason, I'd taken a while to get round to stepping inside Fresh Choices, which is up the top of town, next door to the post office. It doubles as a vintage shop, so there are LPs, books and bric-a-brac outside on the pavement. I suppose I'd just never been hanging around long enough round there to step over the threshold. And stepping over the threshold is all you need.

It's not swish, hip, or trendy in the way you might imagine a "vintage cafe" to be - none of that Shoreditch type nonsense. Just an ordinary coffee bar, also serving food. On Tuesday when I went in at about 12:30 I was by far the youngest in there, I popped in for a cup of tea on my way somewhere else this morning about 11am and it was empty although there's a trickle of other people through there and I assume their peaks are around the office crowd, so first thing in the morning and 1-2pm.

I had a chat with Tom, the owner and said I'd think about doing a meetup or two there. No big commitment, just something to see who turns up and what we might end up doing together. Which will be nice, since I stopped doing Tuttle, that's what I've missed. I've said also that I might do Unhurried Guildford so that might work here too.