Info on this week’s mocha hotspot: Lovecrumbs has become quite the Edinburgh institution since it opened 5 years ago. I remember coming here for the first time during my MSc, after a friend had raved about the cakes. And yah, the cakes are good! In fact, here’s me, way back in 2013 with one of said cakes:
They also serve some savoury food, though I’ve never eaten anything besides their big, delicious slabs o’sponge, so I can’t comment on that – my guess is that it’s tasty. I’ve also had takeaway cappuccinos, but usually opt for an herbal tea if I’m sitting in, which means I’m new to their mocha…how exciting!
It’s fairly quiet, so my drink arrives quickly, in a pleasant yellow mug, served with a flourish, by a pleasant turtle dove (it was brought over in a normal fashion by one of the baristas, I just liked the half-rhyme when I said it in my head). Not too big, not too small. First taste-impressions suggest it’s certainly more towards the coffee end of the spectrum, though there’s a definite hint of dark chocolate nestled in the depths of each sip. Were I not so averse to adding raw sugar to my hot drinks, I’d be tempted to throw in a few granules of the white stuff to mellow the bitter tones that are ringing through each sip. Don’t get me wrong, I consistently breech the RDA of sugar, but that stuff is hidden in biscuits or fruit or whatever – when I can physically see myself pouring raw diabetes into my pancreas, I tend to make the connection and live without it.
It’s been lashing it down on and off all day, so it was a relief to walk in here out of the gross weather. One thing I’ve noticed when I come to Lovecrumbs is that the windows are usually sweating with a thick sheen of condensation. Oppressive though that may sound, once you’re inside it’s spacious enough to assuage any hints of claustrophobia or clamminess and there’s plenty of breathing space between tables (is it becoming clear that I don’t like sitting at cramped coffee shop tables yet?).
Windows like this always drag me back to my early years as a human, though. Why do I think of childhood in the too-hot, breathless terms of steam rising from a pan of carrots cooking? It’s that Sunday-roast-in-the-oven feeling; too many pans and not enough ventilation; children running about (myself included), with sweat-slick hair stuck to their necks and the TV on too loud. If I concentrate on that frenetic buzz of being little for too long, I have a real worry that I might suffocate. I have a sense that this feeling, the feeling of running out of breath when I think about the past is a very pure form of sadness or grief?
It’s very easy to romanticise the past (see political: current state of the country/Brexit), particularly when something awful has thrown a spike in the graph of normality (see personal: two dead brothers/a tinderbox of mental health issues). I’m a self-professed pessimist, so I wonder if this feeling of suffocation when I think back to my early childhood is a response to accessing a feeling of optimism; I can’t process the idea that, at some point, I didn’t believe the world was a harrowing place to live.
Hopefully the previous paragraph sounds ponderous, as intended, rather than severely depressed. Beloveds, I don’t really think the world is all bad! I just said that bit for dramatic effect. For example, Lovecrumbs isn’t the kind of place you would come to stress out. In fact, it seems like a totally stress-less environment, from my point of view right now, at least. You wouldn’t bring someone here to break up with them, say, or to do heavy duty overseas business with lots of spreadsheets and misunderstandings.
There’s a mix of décor vibes going on; part-jungle, part-jazz-club, part-tsunami-damaged-schoolhouse. It’s trendy, but not trying too hard, y’know? There’s an unimposing neon sign that says “nice times” in cursive script – the Lovecrumbs website also reiterates that they’re “all about nice the times”. And that’s what I’m having; a nice time. Nothing spectacular; I’m not sat here drinking my mocha feeling any sense of excitement or foreboding (my two go-to feelings apparently?) It’s nice just to breathe in and out, with the bitter-sweetness of a mocha in conversation with my tongue and nothing to think about but the exact feeling of that.
I didn’t want to come here today. The aforementioned weather made it much more of an effort to pick up my stuff and walk out the door. I’m glad I did, though. I have to go back out and face the wilds soon, despite the strong pull to get another mocha and sit here for few hours, luxuriating in the nice nothingness of the present moment, where I don’t need to delve into the past if I don’t want to, and the future of my afternoon is still a planned entity that I’m in control of, with no obstacles set to derail it.