Sad Cafe

We got the indoor market up and running today, with six socially distanced stalls, but the customers didn't flock in with wild enthusiasm. Most people wanted a watch battery, strap or repair. The watch guy, Roy, who also sold jewellery and vintage dresses, gave up his stall in late October, but the market has been locked down since then, apart from a period in December. The man who sells model trains also does watch batteries, but many people are heartbroken, and not in the mood to buy anything else. We hope to have more stalls back by July (up to a maximum of twelve) but some stallholders may be reconsidering. We've spent eight of the past twelve months being locked out of the market hall.

I hope tomorrow will be better. My takings were not terrible, but it was bitterly cold, as we have doors open at either end, and the internet has ceased to function. I couldn't play my Spotify playlists! I've downloaded some for tomorrow. In an additional twist, my laptop battery is no longer being recognised by the machine. Fortunately, a nice man on YouTube has made a video about how to change the battery by oneself.

After I'd closed the shutters on the stall, metaphorically, I went to a couple of charity shops, but my heart was not open to hunting. I found two good jigsaws, though, including one I'd just seen reviewed on a jigsaw blog, yesterday! I'm pleased to see that these shops are accepting donations again. Then I strode off to Waitrose to buy yoghurt, and snapped this sad cafe on my way to the loos. I used to have meetings in Waitrose cafe, in another era. It was the perfect middle class anonymous neutral space, before they built this strange corridor-cafe and started charging the rules on free coffees every ten minutes. Who gets free coffees from supermarkets now? More likely to get free CoVid, though Stroud district now has only three cases per hundred thousand people. Let's keep smiling behind our masks, at least for the time being. I wonder if we will recognise our acquaintances when they have new haircuts AND naked faces!

Video: Sad cafe. They don't make songs, or hair, like they used to! https://youtu.be/KoIgTBz7GeM