Wise people often double as fools. The singing poet is eerily similar to the court jester. Ovid, the most famous poet in Augustan Rome, was also the clown pining after his absent girlfriend in The Amores. Artists are often the subject of contempt. In his collection, Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire has many poems lamenting his mistreatment at the hands of society. He compares himself to an albatross, a beautiful bird that soars unmatched in the sky but lumbers back on earth with its enormous wings. Socrates himself, the father of Western philosophy, was ridiculed by the playwright Aristophanes in his comedy The Clouds.
My father is a wise man and also a well-meaning fool. He doesn’t take anything too seriously and has an amiable and bemused demeanour. He likes to learn Spanish and loves to exercise or go windsurfing by the seaside.
Notably, he’s excellent at planning holidays and finding good hotels. His travel philosophy is simple: he likes to see the sights and go for hikes, but nothing compares to reading a book in a nice café or bar. This is where his wisdom peaks. There’s no point frantically rushing around when you’re abroad. You can best appreciate the place you’re in when all is still and you have time to think.
I find myself agreeing with my dad. Some of the nicest memories from past holidays are those where I’m sitting in a coffee shop, watching the world go by. There’s nothing quite like reading a book with a warm drink in a new place. No other activity allows you to be both at leisure and firmly rooted in your new environment. Coffee shops and bars are liminal spaces where ordinary people go to indulge themselves, to celebrate, commiserate, see friends, escape the rat race, or find time to be alone. But these people always have to leave, they can’t stay sitting there drinking forever.
When I was teaching in Japan last summer, I’d sit in an air-conditioned coffee shop near Shinjuku, read, and watch business people file in and out of my periphery. In the upper-class district of Daikanyama, I found a Western-style coffee shop beside a museum. I still remember how tranquil and present I felt sitting on a stool with my table beside the window, looking out onto the sweltering road. In this coffee shop, instead of being in the museum next door, I was in the environment, contributing to the energy of the place. I’d argue that when one takes the role of a typical tourist, taking photos, marching about in groups, you obstruct this energy, you counterbalance the happy medium of everyday life. You can understand the anger of locals in towns like Venice, Paris, or even Oxford, where there’s a constant flow of unashamed visitors - great processions of holidaymakers led by flag-bearing tour guides.
But these cities are best enjoyed when one pretends to be a local - when you do as the Romans do. It's best to rise early and go and read in coffee shops in obscure locations. Two summers ago, in the heart of The Lubéron, in Provence, my uncle and I walked up to the village of La Cadière-d'Azur, a scattering of houses with a church on top of a small hill. Technically, it’s a fortified village, and on the slopes of the hill stand rows of regimented vines, all heavy with grapes destined to become Bandol wine. When we entered the village, we found a small shop that sold lottery tickets, newspapers, and doubled as a café/bar. There were tables and chairs set out on the opposite pavement that enjoyed some shade under a line of plane trees. We ordered some drinks - my uncle took a coffee, I ordered sparkling water - and we absorbed the movement and the gentle sounds of the village.
The most consistent sparkles of honest joy and enlightenment have come from times spent reading in two coffee shops in Oxford and Cambridge.
In Oxford, like a Michelin inspector, I’ve done the rounds at the coffee shops and bars. I used to like a place called Society Café, which sits opposite the Oxford Union and has a minimalist, hipster aesthetic, with framed black-and-white photographs of pensioners in suits. It’s one of those places where you can see the pipes above your head, it has an industrial look and they thought - hey who needs a conventional ceiling anyway? Society Café cater to this hipster/young-family/student demographic and that’s why they also have a branch in Bristol which I actually quite like. But in Oxford, I began to find the café a bit too dark and authoritative. The seats were hard, it was always too busy, there was nothing truly authentic about the place.
It was in my 4th year that I found the best coffee shop in Oxford. I lived on Cowley Road, away from the cloistered centre of the University, a part of Oxford where you see diversity, record shops, and Thai restaurants so good that there’s a six-month waiting list for a table of two.
The coffee shop was towards the end of the road before it slightly bends right and reaches the roundabout which opens onto Magdalen Bridge. The shop front is framed with blue, wooden tables standing outside on the pavement and there’s a great red sign saying “Peloton Espresso - Speciality Coffee - Home Brewing Equipment and Beans - Fresh Bakes”. There’s a strong warm light inside and the floor is wood-panelled with framed images of cyclists and retro Tour jerseys. By the counter there’s a large coffee machine and behind it some stairs to the kitchen. The owner works there during the week. He’s bubbly, bearded, and always positive, laughing with colleagues or trying out new coffee they’ve brought in. They make their own cakes and all coffee is priced affordably. What I like most about it is that it’s where the community comes to get their coffee: Oxford professors, students, local professionals. Everyone’s treated the same.
What I like to do whenever I’m back home is to get to Oxford early in the morning on a Saturday and walk the 30 minutes from the station to the coffee shop. If it’s a fragile winter’s morning with no clouds, you can catch Oxford’s finest landmarks sparkling in the orange rays of the sunrise: The Four Candles Pub on Georges Street, Trinity College and The Bodleian along the Broad, High Street glimmering as it makes its way to The Cowley Roundabout. After that, it’s two minutes further into Eastern Oxford - your destination which sits tightly between a Michelin-starred tapas restaurant, and an Algerian/Palestinian greengrocer. When I make these early weekend trips, I love to sit at a table looking out onto the street, order a decaf flat white with one sugar, and order two crumpets with raspberry jam and marmite. Can life get any better than that? I don’t think so.
In Cambridge, a city on the less practical side of Southern England, I also have a cherished coffee shop. This time it’s not such a small and community-driven affair but rather a stylish café with elegant comfy chairs, a marble countertop, and fine art and sculpture placed around the space. Despite having a different ambience and interior design, it still makes great coffee and sells organic beans and homemade bakes. It’s called Bould Brothers and sits on Regent Street right by Downing College. When I studied at Cambridge for 6 months last year, the café sat a perfect location between my accommodation and Downing. I could grab a coffee and then continue up to library, sneaking the hot drink past the librarian. I came to Bould Brothers one time on a bank holiday when I had no work to do. I ordered a flat white and read Sense and Sensibility for 2 hours. I was pleasantly distracted by people coming in and out, the door sliding open and a puff of cold air rushing into the café. Every so often, I’d go outside and get some sunlight.
A truly great coffee shop is a rare find, and such places should be protected at all costs like World Heritage Sites or The Amazon Rainforest.
