SA SMITH

In the countryside the sky comes down lower, or it starts closer. The horizon is further away, and it tickles the light blue seedlings that grow into the steep azure dome sitting above us. This is quite a different feeling to the low ashen ceiling of a city-scape. There is freedom and wonder in the span of the celestial sphere that throbs gently about you.

The bricks are sand yellow. That is the prevailing colour of the building at least. If you were to take a moment, as few do, you’d notice that every third brick is black, or a loud brown. The windows are evenly spaced, up and across, like holes on a connect-4 frame. They are tall, presumably spanning half the height of each storey. The frames are a contrasting charcoal grey, thin as match-sticks. The panes are thin and let out little light, giving the sense of a dark, cavernous interior. The emerging impression from some distance is that the windows are not glazed at all. The headers arch across each window-top, in neat orange brick.

We rarely write about coffee here, and sometimes we do.

The Gentlemen Baristas have a few locations in the Borough area of London. Union St is a narrow back street that gets more foot-traffic than traffic-traffic. On this street there is a small builders’ yard and other anonymous buildings. Only ‘The Coffee House’ the pub next door make any imprint on the eye. It is a tall and narrow building, squeezed between its neighbours with its elbows in.

The best beach in London is hidden, like a secret garden, by murky grey water at high tide. Its sand is incongruously soft and golden when uncovered. Rotting wooden scaffold beams that seem to have been assembled from the masts of old smuggling ships cover the beach’s long tail. The structure supports a Chinese takeaway and a small block of flats that overreach the land they started on.