I planned to write for five mins at a time, observing. Practising writing the detail to buld a character or atmosphere. I could start with that chair opposite, because I've positioned myself in the cafe such that I can't actually see anyone really.
It's an old wing backed chair that has been recovered in a hideous 'baby shit' brown velvet. The seat is foam and it has curvy, stumpy wooden legs - I'm not clever enough to recognise the period.
The chair is less comfy than it looks and it's positioned in the window at an angle to the door, so it is both uncomfortable and drafty and it is almost always set apart from the other two, more modern chairs near by. It's a solo chair. I was probably someone's granny's favourite chair although when she sat in it the original material was a heavy green brocade already threadbear at the arms with the horsehair stuffing poking through under the hand made arm protectors.
It's the kind of chair that would have aspired to an antimacasser but not really knowing what that was - granny used to put a hand crocheted doilly over the back of it if the vicar was coming over to talk about the cleaning rotas, or flowers for the church.
The chair doesn't get sat in as much as the other more obvious modern plasticcy/leather cafe style buckets. It's too much of a statement and it is stuck in that cold spot by the door. The chair doesn't mind. In fact it prefers to remain unsat in. All those well toned, young mummy backsides are bony and uncomfy too and the chair can do without being crawled all over by tag teams of little ones with sticky cake filled paws and dribble. Ugh..
The dribble is the worst thing, at least when granny dribbled she was facing forwards, she only did that at the end though poor old duck. With no-one left to wipe away the drool it stuck in creamy, gluey gobs at the corners of her old dry mouth. Quite revolting really. At least the only leaking the chair ever did was a few feathers from the old plump cushion. No chance of that now with the new memory foam replacement cushion pad.
What does memory foam actuall mean?...
There's more to this little wimbling exercise but I will post it later... time to head off for today's adventure.
You really will have to excuse the typos and spelling mistakes, I hand write everything in my own mad shorthand, and awful handwriting and then I transcribe without changing what I've written, to try to maintain a discipline of no self editing at this stage. The mistakes are as a result of the speed of input - I could go back and correct but for now - the impetus is to get these stories and exercises logged - witnessed and done...
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