Café Nero.

The old, plump man stands animated; arms flailing in an emotive gesture. Attentively the woman is listening as if infatuated on every, single, word.  Friends contrived. An odd encounter sustains a relationship. But there is no context, missing, and as such permits the (re)uniting of kin. And so parley the state of the mother, of the children, of the shop: fine and tidy and just getting by with its top quality produce and reasonable prices. Some Marxist fantasy land. The altruistic delicatessen you wish to meet. But you cannot - no context.

The right’s corresponding: here the abundant Italian facade's spelled out. The store sign in rich gold plated lettering. Specials and offers and menus in delightful Italian speak of the finer things, without any requirement of translation.  The wares without distinction to the store, left, and similarly arranged. Though the trader finds himself a more streamlined industrious fellow; the type of Italian endeavoring to work twice as hard to vainly spur a leaky economy.

Both scenes are trying. It has all been done… over and over… and over again. It is fitting, then, that the bland freeze-frames are incorporated to such a significant (and arrant) extent to compliment the fresh burgundy, the fading wood, the worn brown leather. It is further fitting, then, that these pieces are overlooked.

Principally ignorant of the unworthy attention is an animated young pair. They sit under the passionate encounter deep amongst the leather, swept in conversation as heads bop to and fro and limbs figuratively fly to illustrate the most worthy lines of reason. They aren't here for the coffee.

In the opposite corner, to the dynamic duo, on chairs by tables, sits an overweight, middle-aged couple subdued under newspaper and books and coffee cups. Underneath decadent latin romance, the man nose deep in a miniature guidebook squints at the finer print. The woman, blank, poses a tough question in which he must delve deep and squint harder to reference. Excuse for silence. The answer, eventually, bricklane.

Obscuring the couple of pairs, and the aforementioned pair, sit three. Three: the all-consuming epitome.  One shrieks in a joyous high-pitched wail of pub crawls, walking tours, poor housing, lack of work, of new farm, of townsville, of brisbane, of portugal, of paris, of contiki, of an apparent perpetual undying… The others nod.

The brown leather lounges, bejeweled by the flailing philanthropic Italian and his ceaseless ability to surprise and enthrall through pithy comment and contentious opinion and his one-woman fan club, hosts a new couple, bringing identical cups of black tea, identical outfits and identical glasses, shoes and homely hair. Behold. They acknowledge each other rarely. Secure in each others committed presence, they sip their tea.

All with their chosen supplements considered worthy investments. They take. They talk. They listen. They reflect. One by one a couple leaves. A new party arrives to take their place. On-going til the lights are dimmed and the scenes shadowed. Then the chairs returned to order, the cups cleaned, the tables wiped, the floors washed. For it all beings again tomorrow...

Over and over, and over again