The Café Near My Home

The poem by Paul Thomas Galbally ‘A Café on My Street’ struck a cord with me as I sat in my local café towards closing time while the chairs and tables were being wiped, floors swept, stock covered and perishables put in the refrigerator. The barista and wait staff moved slowly with end-of-the-day tiredness.

My experience is not as poignant as Galbally’s but I can well imagine that my local café owner will not want to stay for years in the one spot. He’s too young to have the desire to grow old and create a poetic backstory like this for people in the suburbs. Read on…

Local café closing time © Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2023

The Café on My Street
by Paul Thomas Galbally

This is my street
An old street,
In an old Irish town
The people come
And then they go
In the soft rain
Of a short Irish summer

When the mood is on me
I let my feet walk
And they always
Seem to bring me here
The café at the end of the street
And sure,
Where else would they go?

Many is a time
I had a hearty steak sandwich
Or fishcakes with potatoes
Or just a coffee and scuffin
To beat the cold outside
And it’s many the friend
I found in there
Aye, and lovers too.

It’s face is green and black
Milanese style
So the owners tell me
With a striped green and white awning
And simple tables and chairs
And all the love in the world

Music has been had there
And poetry, and just craic
Long Scrabble Saturdays
Taken very seriously
We even bought the dictionary
To stop the heated
Word exchanges

So I know most of the people
There is always a smile
Headed in my direction
When I am blue
It brings me to life
Somewhat
And needless to say
The food is always good

It is funny, how
Friends and family
Merge sometimes
As happens
In the Café at the end of the street
Where friends are family
And family are friends

They told me
They are closing in September
A loss like a family bereavement
I can only hope that
I find another place to go
Or maybe a new street to live on
Where I can
Walk out my door, and feel
Home

Paul Thomas Galbally, Ireland, August 2014
https://hellopoetry.com/paul-thomas-galbally/

“Think of them as a cross between scones and muffins
or as I like to call them scuffins.
These Irish muffins can be enjoyed in many ways.
Straight out of the oven for a warm breakfast treat,
as a quick snack with butter,
or part of your bread basket at mealtime”
Once Upon A Chef – Recipe from Jenn Segal

Old Books – Timeless or Laughable?

It is time to attack my bookberg. Book sorting! Only another book lover will know this task is emotional, dusty work with frequent trips back and forth to the reject box to retrieve a volume you just can’t live without.

I did not factor in the impact of nostalgia. As I sifted and culled, I was overwhelmed by the memories which came flooding back.

Relating to the photograph above, here’s a small sample of the tip of my bookberg:

Those aching muscles as I tried to emulate actress and fitness guru Jane Fonda using her inspiring 1981 ‘Workout Book’. The less said about the front cover the better.

My 1986 major motion picture tie-in ‘Out Of Africa’ by Karen von Blixen was purchased after I saw the movie because I wanted to see how much the movie had altered the book. Well, let’s just say it was movie mush.

‘Finest Moments’ the hilarious 1975 antics of Norman Gunston (Australian TV comedian Garry McDonald) were clever but now make me cringe. Gunston dared to go where no journo had gone before. McDonald was a good scriptwriter but.

I tried and tried to read this 1984 paperback of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’. Even now as I look at its yellowing pages (it cost me $4.50 back then) I don’t think I will ever read it. Most of it has come true, right?

The small yet 383-page book ‘Angels & Fairies’ written 2005 by Iain Zaczek was a surprise. A gift, seemingly unread, it contains works of art from famous British painters in 1800s Victorian era. Such luminous illustrations, if ever there was a misnamed book, it’s this one! Nothing cutesy about it. A serious study for art aficionados.

IMG_20200302_183938 — Need I say more? Heavy old coffee-table books, classic black and white photographs with depth and clarity, each one telling a story.

During re-reading and culling, three things struck me immediately.

The smallness of the paperbacks.
The density of the print.
The amount of information.

I guess smaller books meant cheaper to print, easier to handle.
Because I now need reading glasses, the print looks tiny to me.
Does excessive screen time influence the way we read off screen?
We read less content, larger font and wider spaces today, because of what?

Several of my earlier paperbacks have bios, dedications, illo plates, notes, etc.
Or a pull-out page so you could fill in your details and mail to the publisher to receive the author’s complete booklist.

Fortunately the only thing which hasn’t changed is real bookshops.
They may be fewer in certain countries but they are alive and well where I live.

Getting back to those rejected books, I have cardboard boxes (ah, that smell of cardboard) to pack them in and send off to University of Queensland for their Book Fair.

I was mightily impressed with UQ book wrangling skills, particularly after I visited their Book Auction and saw frantic bidders making the value of old books rise higher and higher until the final bid, the hammer fall, the cry of delight from the successful bidder.

My three-part series of UQ Book Fair visits last year—brilliant photos—