Coffee with Lord Byron
- Newark Market Place
- Lord Byron woz ‘ere
I have decided that my Girls FC books are taking too long to write so I’m trying something different and doing a JK. By ‘doing a JK’ I mean writing in cafes rather than at home. Who knows what might happen? So, disregarding Eve Ibbotson’s advice to ‘write in the same place every day so that ideas know where to find you,‘ I took myself off to Newark yesterday and found a table in Byron’s café instead.
Byron’s Café was not, of course, a café in 1806 when he first stepped over that fine edifice you see on your left. Then it was a printers (S and J Ridge) who were awarded the task of printing 28 of the good Lord’s poems in a collection called ‘Fugitive Pieces.’
To say the building had seen better days would be an understatement. Better decades more like. The original staircase leading to the upstairs accommodation would have been handsome at one time but the wood beneath it has been lost in layers of gluey paint and the woodchipped lilac walls, grimy with grease, already foretold that my coffee would not be of the freshly brewed variety.
I’m afraid the cafe fulfilled my expectations. I don’t mind a greasy spoon experience now and again but… y’know. I don’t want to sound all lady-who-lattes here but this was where Byron had been, right? He’d set foot in here. He’d had his first poems printed here. We’re talking about Byron, guys. You know. Don Juan. Childe Harold and all that. The dude who died a tragic, heroic and above all Romantic death (marsh fever 1824 aged 36, Missolonghi). Lord Lock-up-your-daughters mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know Byron. Here, on your indifferent doorstep, Newark.
Are you gathering I was a tad disappointed at what I found?
Upstairs in the café itself, the walls turned from icy lilac to a grubby pastel pink. This included the radiators in what is - quite rightly in this instance - called ‘a distressed look.’ They weren’t the only ones. I was pretty distressed myself. Why would a building of such significence and magnificence be allowed to decay like this? Yet the potential of the place was breathtaking. Plastered high-ceilings together with a long row of sash windows across the far wall looking out onto the historic market square;such potential! The place should have been a tourist magnet. Instead it looked like a bus station caff from 1964. There were three saving graces. The lady who served me was lovely. She became worried that my coffee wouldn’t be strong enough (it wasn’t) and took it away to replenish at no extra charge. The cafe was quiet (well, dead, but that meant I didn’t have to worry about being disturbed by other customers) and thirdly the view. Wednesday is market day in Newark so there was plenty to watch. A student with a cardboard placard advertising ‘free hugs’ (A level psychology experiment? ) among other things.
I did try. I took out my things (a stack of A4 paper, pen, pencil, postcard of my Girls FC team). I jotted some thoughts but not many. I was too distracted by the pink radiators. As for Lord Byron; he’d long gone, taking his genius with him. I drank my coffee, packed away and went to pick up my dry cleaning. Maybe I’m too fussy. I’ll try somewhere else tomorrow.
- craftsmanship lost in magnolia
