The Department Store Cafe

By Alex Allen

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Why do old people like cafes so much? What is it about that combination of backdated communal newspapers, stale scones and vending machine coffee that they find so alluring? If you're under the age of thirty, you probably don't know that a lot of shops have cafes that aren't Starbucks or Costa. Generally, you only notice them if you're trying to find the exit and take a wrong turn, or if you end up there with a parent or grandparent who fears change. Sometimes, they have the most ridiculous names, the BHS cafe is called 'Revive'. Judge for yourself how appropriate calling a cafe that is filled mostly by old people 'Revive' is, they might as well have called it 'Resuscitate' and been done with it. In these places, you can buy a whole host of things that nobody in the 21st century knows how to make anymore, things that use ingredients like suet, cornflour and oxo cubes. You can find casserole there, maybe stew, things that use dumplings and puff pastry. The thing is, you never know what the fuck you're actually ordering. Everything comes in these mystery trays, identifiable only by colour. Yes, there's sometimes a little sign, but all you can see is a brown, lumpy swamp (I apologise, I realise that is a dreadul visual). The worst thing is that once the fifty something dinner lady reaches in with her ladel, you're committed! You can't go back! You see it, and you wish to God you could go back, but it's a completed transaction. It's not like she can scoop it back off your plate again.

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So now, not only do you have to suffer the indignity of eating the kind of meal you used to struggle through at your grandparent's house, but you're then charged £7.95 for the priviledge! No, wait, there's been a VAT cut, £7.53! On a sidenote, this recent VAT cut is ridiculous. Firstly, 2.5% is not enough to make a difference to whether I want to buy things. More than that though, it has reduced the prices of products to stupid figures that nobody has. Suddenly food costs £4.78 instead of £5.00. I have absolutely no use whatsoever for that twenty two pence, call me a product of the throwaway generation, but it is completely useless currency to me. I would rather pay full price, and then one day the cashier could randomnly say 'you win today Sir! Your blueberry muffin is on the house!' That would be my credit crunch relief system. It also just seems to confuse old people who are used to shopping at Iceland and paying for everything with pound coins. As if it didn't take them long enough to wade through their coin purse full of old fifty pence pieces and keys, now they've got to count out forty three pence in change. Do you have any idea how long that takes? We constantly hear about how exams are getting easier, we're getting stupider and how none of us could pass the eleven plus anymore. Where's the evidence! Why can't these people add anything up?

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Then, once you've finally paid for your food (you're already annoyed that you've had to pay extra for ketchup), you're released in to probably the most depressing room on Earth, the home of the dining dead. This room is always full of elderly couples who have been together for so long that they have nothing left to say to each other. They've heard every story their partner has, every joke, every annecdote, every sentence, so nobody says anything. It's a whole room full of people, saying nothing. Just take a moment to visualise how creepy that actually is. They're just just glad to be out of the house, even thought the cafe looks exactly like their house (all floral prints and cream), and serves the same food, too. If you say anything, you know that everybody is listening to you saying it. Shudder. Still, let us enjoy these odd establishments while they still exist. Soon, we will be be so awash with Cafe Nero, Pret A Manger that there will be no room for the Debenham cafe. It will disappear like the dodo and Brylcream, and we'll all be let eating nothing but falaffal, roasted peppers and basil.