Look at moi! I'm writing in a cafe!

I started writing this week's blog in a cafe.

I know! 
It's too ridiculous!

I always laugh at the idea of writers working in cafes. 
I mean, how PRETENTIOUS!

Look at moi!
I'm a writer! 
I'm writing! 
I'm very clever and creative and literary.

I imagine myself waving a fountain pen in the air, as I half-sing, half-laugh these very words, placing special emphasis on 'literary'. I pronounce it with four distinct syllables - LIT-ER-AIR-EE - just to poke a little bit of fun at myself while also making sure that nobody misses the fact that I have a fabulous vocabulary and I'm not afraid to use it.

I also imagine myself wearing a voluminous sack-shaped linen dress, elastic-sided riding boots (no socks), tiny round glasses and no make-up except for a dash of bright pink lipstick. Because I am far too busy and creative and LIT-ER-AIR-EE to be concerned about organising my wardrobe or applying a full face of make-up. 

Look at moi!

Look at moi!

Look at moi!

But, it's not just being pretentious that puts me off the idea of cafe writing. 
No, no, no, no!
It's all those DISTRACTIONS.
There is so much happening in a cafe. 
So much to see and do and hear and touch and smell.
People to watch.
Conversations to hear. (It's not eves-dropping if you're a writer, surely?)
Wobbly tables to shore up with cleverly placed sachets of Stevia.
Coffee to sip.
Cakes to sniff and lick and nibble.
Paper serviettes that are just begging to be transformed into paper cranes.

No, writing in a cafe just doesn't make sense.

And yet, there I was, late on Wednesday morning, writing in  a cafe. 
An Austrian cafe, at that. 
SOOOOO PRETENTIOUS!
But not quite so pretentious when you realise that the Austrian cafe was in Castlemaine, not Vienna.

But I was there for good reason.
It was hot.
Stinking hot.
And the air conditioning in my new house was not yet up and running.
And cafes have air-conditioning.
And coffee and cake.
And this particular cafe, had coffee and apple-custard tart - or as they so charmingly put it, kaffee und apfel-pudding-torte - and it was served by the most gorgeous hipster waiters wearing long aprons and warm smiles.

So there I was, sipping coffee, eating tart and writing this week's blog.
And, to be honest, I was going great guns until I'd chugged down all the coffee, gobbled all the tart and licked every last skerrick of whipped cream off the plate - about five minutes after it landed at my table! (I might be LIT-ER-AIR-EE but I'm a jolly fast eater!)


Now what?

You can't just sit in a cafe all day, using up lucrative customer space, just because you need somewhere cool and comfortable to write.
That would be rude and self-centred and, well, PRETENTIOUS!

Look at moi!
I'm a writer! 
I'm writing! 
I'm so very clever and creative and literary that the cafe owner is happy to sacrifice this table with its wonderful lunchtime earning potential in order to bask in the glory of my non-paying presence.

Of course, I could have ordered another cup of coffee, but that seemed too stingy. 
I'd have to add a couple of sausages to the order. 
Maybe even some cabbage and fried potatoes. 
But I was full.
Really full.
You should have seen how big that slice of apple-custard tart was!

Besides, the würste mit sauerkraut would arrive, I'd gobble it up and I'd be right back where I started.
Except that, now, there'd be sausage grease and strings of fermented cabbage across the pages of my notebook.
And I'd be feeling ill from overeating.

Hmmm. Tricky.

So I packed up my notebook and pen, paid the bill and left.
I'd written two pages.
Two small pages. (My notebook was tiny.)
The word to cake ratio was too low.
Totally unsustainable.

A cafe writer I am not.

But where to go?
What to do?
There was work to be done and a hot house to avoid.

I rejected the park. By this stage, even the shady spots beneath the trees were growing sauna-ish.

I considered writing in the ice-cream freezer at the IGA. It wouldn't be as pretentious as writing in a cafe, but I had an inkling that it would draw unwanted attention and be considered socially unacceptable. Nobody wants to open their Blue Ribbon to find two buttocks imprinted in the top of the ice cream. Not even if they're LIT-ER-AIR-EE buttocks.

Yes, this really is my bottom.
I blame it on all that apfel-pudding-torte.

I considered driving around in the air-conditioned comfort of my car, recording my spoken words on my phone.  But I'm a pen-and-paper, keyboard-and-screen type of gal. I need to feel the words flowing from brain to fingers to page. I need to see the sentences taking shape.

In the end, I did what any sensible person would have done in the first place.
I took myself to the library.
And there I found my space.
A quiet corner with a huge table, a comfy chair and deliciously chilled air.
A place where people are expected to be reading and writing.
A place where one can scribble words to one's heart's content without feeling even a tad pretentious.
And that is where I wrote the rest of this blog.

Castlemaine Library is not quite this big,
but it is just as lovely.

Furthermore, once I was done, I read four home decorating magazines, and toddled home with five DVDs and a lovely book on Switzerland tucked beneath my arm.

All in all, a public writing experiment with a jolly outcome. 
Except that my blog is about nothing more than writing this blog...



*
With apologies to my writer friends who work in cafes rather than at home because:
a) they need to escape their noisy children
b) they need to escape their smelly dog
c) they've run out of coffee at home
d) they have enormous appetites and giant royalty cheques so can afford to sit at a cafe table all day, ordering an endless supply of coffee, cake and toasties while they write
e) they like it

The truth about Book Club

It's time someone told the truth.
Loudly.
Boldly.
And, truly,  it surprises me that it even needs to be said.
But it does. 
Because there is  a big fat myth still floating around in some sick circles.
So here goes. The truth:
BOOK CLUB IS NOT ABOUT BOOKS.*

Sure, there might be some vague discussion revolving around a book. 
There might be a passage read or, at least, a pair of reading glasses perched upon someone's nose. One likes to look the part. 
There might even be a Dymocks catalogue or a book review, torn from the newspaper, tossed elegantly onto the coffee table.
But the idea that Book Club is a gathering of people for the primary  purpose of discussing and analysing a book, is soooo wrong. 

Let me make it simple. Book Club is about the five c's: 

• champagne
• chocolate 
• cake
• cuppas
• chitter-chatter

Of course, there is some disagreement between various book clubs as to what the 5 c's truly represent.
Some claim that the first c is not for champagne, but for chardonnay ... or even cabernet sauvignon. Others substitute  chips for chocolate, cheese for cake, cackling for chitter-chatter. (I heard that one book club tried to substitute carrot sticks for chocolate and coconut water for champagne, but they did not survive beyond their first meeting. No surprises there!)

But no matter how you interpret the five c's, books start with b so, obviously, do not feature in the list of the five most important things about Book Club.

Unfortunately, there are still a deluded few who have missed the point. 
The ones who believe that Book Club is primarily - or even exclusively - about books. 

My local library gathered all its registered book clubs together one year - just for a happy pre-Christmas fling. 
What a delightful idea! 
Significantly, it was held in a conservatory full of flowers and we were served wine, cheese, bickies and summer fruit. There was not a book in sight! 
Never the less, I still met one lost soul who obviously belonged to a dysfunctional book club, i.e. a book club whose members took themselves seriously. This poor man asked me about the roles we had in our book club. He said 'roles',  but I heard 'rolls'. I was just about to explain that we didn't normally eat rolls, but I was quite open to the idea of incorporating sausage rolls, or even spring rolls, into our gatherings, when he started muttering about author biographies, plot summaries, character analyses and a whole heap of other literary and grammatical stuff that I didn't even understand. The members of his club actually had roles to fulfil (not rolls to fill) for each and every gathering. Scary stuff!

And then there's the sad tale of my friend, a supremely talented and charming woman who works in a coveted role in the publishing industry. 
She was expelled from her book club. 
Expelled!
For not reading the books. 
She just wanted to go along and chat and eat cake. 
And they wouldn't let her!!!

Let me tell you about my book club. 
A typical gathering  begins with hugs and kisses and everyone talking over the top of each other as we arrive. 
We drink tea and champagne and we nibble chocolate, liquorice allsorts, bickies, cheese, olives, sun-dried tomatoes ... you get the idea. 
And as  we nibble, we talk about our families, our jobs, our holiday plans and the disturbing trend towards corset-type underwear. 
An hour or so into the gathering, someone might casually suggest that we talk about our book. Typically, ten or fifteen minutes of literary discussion will take place**, then we'll pop the kettle on, bring out a cake and start talking about  how much we like our host's new cushions, our cholesterol levels, our gardens and  which movie we're going to see next time we gather for Book Club. (See how free and easy we are in interpreting the word 'book'?)

The point is, BOOK CLUB IS NOT ABOUT BOOKS.

It's about books and friends and laughter and cake. 

If you belong to a  book club that is sinking into the Slough of Deep and Serious Literary Discussion Which Goes On and On for Far Too Long, I have created a valuable tool for you to take to your next gathering:

And because I am kind, I offer here my list of short but fabulous books. If you get your book club  reading these and introduce the flow chart , you can have your cake and eat it too.

SHORT, HIGH QUALITY BOOKS FOR BOOK CLUBS:

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly, by Sun-Mi Hwang

Winnie the Pooh, by A. A. Milne

The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan (No words. None at all!)

Happy book clubbing.

X

* Just as Craft Group is not about craft. 

CLICK HERE to read more.

** We did have a book discussion, recently, that went for almost half an hour. But that was mainly due to the fact that I had failed to grasp something quite significant about the theme and structure of the novel  -  My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, by Fredrik Backman - and my companions were trying to explain it to me between their gasps of laughter and their expressions of wonder at how obtuse I had been!