With my really crappy graveyard job working monday night to friday night, the only real benefit is having Monday afternoons to relax, read a book, try to do some writing. Since we moved a couple months ago, it's been difficult finding a place to chill out away from home. Back in Soho, there were a myriad coffeeshops and a nice park to go to. Coffee to guzzle, people to watch, and near to home. I was really spoiled living there. Here in Whitechapel, I haven't really had to chance to find anything. There's a couple of nice coffeeshops about fifteen minutes walk. one with lots of windows and many electronic toys to play with, and damn good coffee. the other is all groovy relax pad: lots of sofas, chairs, cushions, nice music but a bit too cavish for reading and writing; it's more a people watching place.
But i finally found a place on Whitechapel Street. It's more a cafe, a hole in the wall, but there salsa music playing and decent coffee, and i can distract myself watching people walk by on the street. Today I helped a man decipher the hell that is known as Uk phone number prefixes. He'd been given the old 0171 prefix, when they'd been all changed months ago. now it 0207, except when you're in the 0207 area, then you dial just 7. Which is pretty damn annoying. It's all been done to allow for more mobile phone numbers.
I settled into my book, (The Snow Leopard by Peter Mattheison) letting the ice melt in my coffee, when i noticed the tattoo on the neck of a woman sitting at the table outside the front window. She was with three otheres, in a business meeting, and written on her neck was the word AT, in grey swipe lettering. I wondered why this word, and was glad it wasn't the @ symbol; that would have just been too pretentious.
I delved back into a mystic tale of travels through the Himalayas to watch blue sheep in the hope of glimpsing a snow leopard. I looked up at a pause in my reading and say the word had changed to OZ. Her Tattoo had changed! I suddenly felt all hot and bothered: was this? no, It couldn't... had LCD tattoos finally really moved to the mainstream? Could she display any two letters in that space on her neck? I'd heard of them, being developed for medical purposes so that people with various conditions didn't have to have the metal ID bracelet on them. They would be powered by the human body, and contain a limited amount of information, but certainly enough to pass on allergic conditions, epileptic problems and more.
She shifted, and the word MORE appeared. She was sitting in the sun, which reflected the words TOZA, a brand of tea, onto her neck. The rest of the window was filled with more words advertising the wares of the cafe i was in. I felt a rush of embarrassment and disappointment. But, for a moment, I had believed.