I’m missing friends and family during this strange and unsettling period of isolation, of course I am, but the phone calls and FaceTimes go some way towards staying as connected as we can. Plus, I’m lucky to have three other people in my home to share this time with. What I’m also missing is that atmospheric contact with people in general, the busy places, being able to absorb humanity in action as people go about their lives all around you. The 2-metre-spaced side-step shuffle around Tesco or the awkward accidental encounters with friends while out on a walk just aren’t the same, although a trip to the local farm shop is becoming a highlight of my essential outings.  

I’m missing cafés and bookshops.  

Cafés and bookshops are both doorways to other worlds. The cafés because they’re a great place to people-watch as you tune in or tune out the conversations going on around. People ordering, passing pleasantries, talking about the weather, catching up, hugging, budging up to make room, greeting, sharing, passing the newspaper, swapping gossip, arguing over who is paying or what they’re going to have “No, I shouldn’t. OK let’s share one.” People being people.  

Despite being used to working in semi-isolation most of the time, I’ve learnt that even I need to be around other people more often than I realised to give me perspective, context and energy. Sitting in a café with friends catching up over a cuppa or sat on my own with the hustle and bustle going on around me is perfection. The familiar background noise of chinking crockery, the whoosh of the steam wand, the warming smells of coffee and pastries that gently wrap around like a comfy jumper still clinging to the scent of a favourite perfume.

We can make coffee just as well at home, but it isn’t the same. Just like we can buy books on Amazon rather than in a bookshop, but it isn’t the same. I like to pick up my books, turn them over and feel them in my hands, see how thick it is, what the cover design looks like. I like to browse the table of recommendations or two-for-ones. I like perusing the shelves of second-hand books in charity shops with their fusty dusty smells, battered spines and dog-eared pages, usually while my daughter is scouting for vintage threads.  

There are two types of people in this world, or perhaps two types of books. There are the books that are passed on and on from person to person, read, re-read, recycled to another. Then there are the pristine books that are possessions, treasures stacked neatly on a shelf with their spines barely cracked. Read once, kept neat. I’m the former. I love the thought of a book having a journey, a life to be shared and I happily welcome those a little rough around the edges or with notes tucked inside the cover and I am quick to pass them on when it’s time for them to go, but not all of them leave.  

I think my love for coffee and books started in Barcelona on a trip when I was 17. I had my first café con leche sat in a café in the Plaça Reial. It was served in a tall glass and I sat there soaking in the busy comings and goings from my perfect vantage point.

I also went to a bookshop that had a café (I think it was La Central, I can’t be sure as it was a very long time ago). To my young and provincial self, this was the height of sophistication. Cappuccinos had barely made it to rural Kent by then. A bookshop with a café, in a city, this was something else. Wide-eyed, I went for breakfast and I remember thinking how amazing it was that you could buy a book then sit there and read it with a good cup of coffee and a pastry. All around me people were working, reading, studying, drinking and chatting in English, Castilian and Catalan.  

Coffee and books go hand in hand. It’s ironic that I’m missing bookshops right now when I’ve barely read a thing over the last few weeks other than a couple of short stories and a few blogs. Nothing is holding my concentration or perhaps I’m not able to concentrate. 

Being out and about, being able to come and go as I please, was something I took for granted. I’m looking forward to a stroll down my local high-street when this is all over, soaking in the smells, sights and sounds.

It’s going to be some time until the cafés and bookshops return to ‘normal’ and we can enjoy the experience of them once more. Until then, it’s coffee, books and daydreams of travel from the comfort of home.