At 10 AM today I let a debating group into Free Speech & Liberty to start our trading day two hours earlier than normal. At 12.15 I realised our cook (due to start at 11.45) was not here. By 12.20 I’d established he’d crashed his motorbike but I pushed him and he promised me that he’d be with me in half an hour. I switched on his oven and prayed he’d turn up by 12.45 as the debaters wanted food at 1.
He did not, but I played for time and at 1.15 he arrived, we served, they loved the food and had a great day. I took on a pretty young lefty on the subject of aid for the kleptocrats of Africa (she supported it, I said African need capitalism not handouts) but it killed the time while we waited for the cook.
But that period 12.45-1.15 was stressful. It is times like that that I loathe.
It is now 6.30 and we have had folks in all day. We have a big table arriving at 7 but I know that already today we have made a clear profit of several hundred quid. And that is not including the £15 I made flogging a couple of old Real Man coffee cups and saucers to a drunk Manxie who staggered in.
Our quietest day of the week has already covered c 1/15th of our monthly rent, rates etc. It’s a lovely London evening, ahead of folks arriving for supper I am writing a few things for tomorrow. Life is easy…It is at times like this that I think I could contemplate moving back to London and doing this full time. And now I have just a great chat with a bunch of LSE students who spotted my Ron Paul T-shirt. One wa a libertarian, the others er…less enlightened. But it was fun. Yesterday I had a long chat with a Spanish/Portuguese journalist couple who had come in especially because the support free speech. It almost seems like a perfect life.
But, I suspect that when I arrive finally back in Bristol to see the Mrs and the cats at 2 AM on Sunday morning I might feel rather differently about life.