At the Magic Coffee Bean ...

On my way to the Square Tower, I called in at The Magic Coffee Bean for a cappuccino and plinth of coffee cake - it was raining, an icy, stinging, drizzle - I could have been an edgy apparatchik, skulking in a polluted factory quarter - I was wearing my padded coat - I held a black umbrella above my head -

Walking down Albert Road, towards The King's Theatre, I had loitered outside Antiques shops, drawn by their weird treasures - a scary rocking horse had cruel dark eyes - three china highlanders stood next to a lumpy teddy bear - a facsimile News of the World told me Berlin may fall - in another window, a serene mother dandled a fleshy cherub - 

A bizarre regiment of near naked action men hung from the window of Alfie's Attic - a slim black woman with an Afro invited me to gawp at the sexy fancy dress in Mad 4 It - 

Time was passing - inside the Magic Coffee Bean, I sat towards the back - an oldster chuckled over a page in the Portsmouth Evening News - billowing sails of cloth hung from the ceiling - I eavesdropped strange conversations - 

The cafe was dimly lit - I scribbled a few lines in my black moleskine - lurid cakes nestled under plastic domes - 

I gulped my cappuccino, snarfed my gooey plinth of coffee cake - I thought, as always, that I was in a story I was constructing by the moment -

Look, there was a warning graffito on a wall - there were the pavements, leading to emptiness -