A Diversion with a Crossword

The cafe is a refuge. Bustling with people chatting their white noise away. The sound percolates evenly through the room. The choppy murmur has a sedative effect. Odours of ground coffee and toast. Mother I am home. Comfy seats and a wide, wide window to watch the passersby. But every morning, in he comes, with his wife. Both wearing virtually the same clothes as yesterday. All navy blue and dust. He sits down and picks up two of the broadsheets, clicks his pen and begins the crossword. They are here for two hours. One Americano each, both with warm milk on the side, that is their lot, nothing else. He has the gall to fill in the crossword, fills it in with his vile blue Parker pen that he purchased from WhSmith. This is a public newspaper! I get a smile from her once in a while. She seems pleasant enough, but he, he goes over to the rack and picks up another newspaper and then another, one by one every damn newspaper in the cafe and completes each crossword, with his pen, silently for two hours. Completes them! Not a word to his wife. His offensively grey and red facade never indicates this pleasures him. He remains blank throughout the entire farce, the type of blank that can only derive from a healthy pension and a childless marriage. Satisfaction through life apathy. Nothing can touch him. Apathy for his wife, apathy for the barista and apathy for the crossword. Oh he's a clever old git alright but the gall, the magnificently flagrant gall of the man.