Yet more coffee, anyone?

I like to keep an eye on the coffee culture in Whitstable. I'm a frequent customer, for one thing. And it's interesting that few small businesses, aside from hairdressers maybe, can perhaps inspire such fierce loyalty. Cappuccino consumers and the espresso elite can be very picky about where to call for their shots.
We in Whitstable can get in even more of a froth on the subject. A chain coffee company's High Street entrance was daubed with 'Costa go home' back in 2009, regardless of the fact that it brought 10 local jobs (and that many of this firm's outlets are franchises, so sort-of independent businesses).
I still meet a few local people who say 'oh I never go in there' - but there clearly aren't enough of them to ease the queues frequently faced by the busy baristas. I do wonder how often some of these folk would buy a coffee out anyway. As I've remarked before, Costa's sole but considerable advantage to me over 'independents' is its longer opening hours.
The anti-chain brigade was quick to rise up again when Tesco-backed Harris and Hoole put down a marker on the ex-Clinton Cards shop across the road from Costa (as first made public in an earlier entry on this blog). Posters were posted and petitions raised, and the story even gave the Daily Mail an opportunity for 'arty-type' bashing. The use of Tesco carrier bags as protesting headgear was loudly decried, though, by parents of small children.
Some of the criticism was directed at the fact that Tesco is an invisible though substantial partner in H & H: 'A little bit about who we are' on the company website is so little that it omits any mention of the supermarket's 49% stake.
Eight months later, Clinton Cards is still empty with its windows now used as a convenient noticeboard for other, more overtly political campaigns - Axe the Bedroom Tax, for example.
Meanwhile, even more coffee cups are being filled and drained up and down Whitstable town centre. I came home from holiday to find the Rendez-vous traditional 'caff' re-invented as theWhitstable Coffee Company. Almost at the same time, David Brown's deli in Harbour Street has expanded into next door offering coffees during the day, and wines by the glass or bottle in the evening. And on top of that, the new Waltshaw's local food outlet a few doors along has installed a couple of tables and chairs with locally roasted beans on the drinks menu.

However, I notice that there are now also a few gaps in the town centre, created by Clark's Flooring's move, greengrocery closures and (as of this week), the departure of the Found At Home store after less than two years.
So... even more coffee, anyone?

Looking on the sunny side

Back to Whitstable with a wallop at midnight on Sunday after 10 days in southern France ...missing the fresh croissants, crusty baguettes and (usually, though not 100% reliably) cracking coffee already.
One of the first imperatives to do back home after sleep, the laundry and a kitchen restock was to stroll along the beach in a Whitstable sunset.
We in the Bubble are quite possessive about our showstopping displays of the orb gently but purposefully dropping behind Sheppey leaving the sky in a palette of spreading colours. With postcards galore on sale in the town and many photographers dotted along the shingle bent over their specialised gear, you'd think we were witnessing a rare phenomenon special to Whitstable. There is (or was) even a local website dedicated to pictures of sunsets.
But one of the features of the little village house we rented several hundred miles south of here for a week was - yes - a grandstand view of the fabulous 'coucher de soleil' across the beautiful countryside of Provence... Many, many people are, at slightly different times, watching the same sun do the same thing in a different place and there's a kind of world unity about that that I like.

I find the French on the whole kind, polite and helpful. I'm told it maybe helps that I speak a smattering of the language and make some attempt at adopting a Continental accent. Quite fun to make them play 'guess where the foreigner comes from'.
The fact that everyone you pass on a footpath, every shop assistant and all restaurant staff are not too self-absorbed or self-conscious to sing out 'Bonjour, Madame' is very agreeable, and suggests that France is on the whole an egalitarian society (it's part of their motto, after all... liberty, fraternity, egality; and they solved the aristocracy problem in a very dramatic way some time ago).
But Marseille airport is a bit of an exception.
After an hour in the terminal building waiting for our gate number to appear for the flight home, we twigged that something was wrong. The flight was listed on the board, and thankfully with the expected departure time, but instead of a gate number there was a cryptic 'mp2' displayed.
Turns out that mp2 is a shed in the corner of the airport, well away from all the smart buildings, car rentals etc. and specifically built to make low-cost airline users feel cheap!
No snazzy decor and flashy shops here. You queue at a tiny flatpack-type desk, hump your case on to the scales (no luggage trolleys available), then CARRY IT YOURSELF to a sort-of dumping area hoping that is not the last you see of it.
But it wasn't just the French airport making me feel a cheapskate: the back of my British easyJet chair was broken, which I had to demonstrate each time the crew asked for all seats to be adjusted to an 'upright position'.
C'est la vie.... or, to translate extremely loosely, you get only what you pay for.
But just look at that free sunset...