Art deco coffee cup

I went down to the Shambles indoor market today, though it wasn't one of my stall days, because I'd heard that A and G are trading again in vintage goods and books.

I was greeted by G, who'd remembered that I had bought a beautiful espresso cup and saucer from her last year, and later broken the cup! She'd been saving this little set for me throughout lockdown. She reminded me that it was about a year ago that I did my barista training course. We both agreed that it was a good job that I hadn't jacked in any of my regular jobs to become a barista, as they are now being laid off in their thousands, on account of the downturn in the economy, particularly in cities.

Stroud, being a small town full of coffee shops, is doing OK coffee wise, but of course they'd have to close again, were there to be a second national, or a local, lockdown.
I haven't heard anyone talking about not commuting, but then again most of the people I know are not in conventional employment.

What else? I finished my book.. An early Mike Gayle, Turning Thirty. Although I'm fifty six, I remember a certain amount of agonising about turning thirty in my own life. Today it struck me that it's quite a middle class privilege to have that time for that anxiety. In another life, I might have had a job in a factory, starting from the day I left school, and I might also have been married with three or four kids by that age, and an unreliable husband.
My mother was no factory worker, but she'd had five children by age of thirty and a half, though her husband was merely strange at that stage...

I preferred Mike Gayle's latest novel, which I read recently, but the charity shops only yield, if anything, his early books, all at least twenty years old. The most frequently found book in the charity shops today was The Fault in our Stars by John Green, an everyday American teenage love story about cancer. Remember the film?

Meanwhile, on our estate, some near-neighbours are having a loud (and possibly not socially distanced) party. Techno music is the main feature, but there was a short interlude when they played The Fields of Athenry on a mega-soeaker . I half expected a pop up Irish Rugby crowd to materialise. Nothing would surprise me any more.