John's Cafe

The cab stopped. Found myself outside ‘Dirty John’s Cafe’ cabs strewn all along the street, the friendly residents complained intermittently about this to the traffic wardens who would come... tentatively poking their heads in the ever open door, wagging their fingers. ‘Five minutes’, always five minutes. They, reticent about actually doing anything, unable to quite understand the strange men who lurked in the strange establishment, ....smiling hesitantly at the innuendoes, the younger ones blushing quite openly, the general consensus being that all we ever wanted was simply five minutes with anyone of them, other than the complete dragons which occasionally slithered by. A few of these charming young ladies had been blagged... never had the experience, although, generally believed, I always coveted the idea of one of them in their smart uniform chained up in my flat over a long period, which, so it was said, being my way of operating. This notion had come about by what had happened with my meeting with the young French woman on Charring Cross... she, rather naive in asking if I knew where she could possibly get a ‘Cheap Room’........

Nothing ever changes, especially in John’s Cafe. He had stood in the same spot behind the till for forty seven years without taking one day off... certainly Xmas day was a short one... seven a.m. until the ‘early closing’ at four p.m. A huge, gaunt man, large oval head with white tuffs of hair standing straight out. Typical Italian curved nose, big nostrils with deep, black skull sockets where his eyes lurked. Always unshaven, body wrapped up in a white overall. He could only shuffle across the uneven floorboards, feet long broken by the interminable standing. On the rare occasions he was ill, he would lie upstairs listening to the till operated by ‘Lena’ who normally lurked in the dark below, if it did not ring at the correct speed, he would bang on the floorboards with his walking stick, knowing precisely how fast the money machine should go.

The Menu, hardly Egan Ronay, mostly chips with everything. In the early mornings, before Lena arrived, he would dish out the fry ups with one hand on the pan... the other on the till. The dark shop being always busy. People ignoring the faded yellow fly spotted walls, the rickety chairs and tables propped up by large pieces of wood under the legs to compensate for the sagging floors, the two bare light bulbs hanging from the once white ceiling by frayed flexes. At the very end of the room was a step down into another smaller room an alcove really, with one table and four chairs squeezed into it.


Difficult to know the attraction for John’s Cafe, why we all accumulated there day in, day out, year in, year out. The same faces at the same times, at the same tables, the same never ending stories, some more unbelievable than others. The heyday of Lambs Conduit Street, a period in its long history that will not reoccur again. The street buzzed continually, always something happening, always some new face appearing. Perhaps the added attraction was the almost constant supply of young women which John managed to get to work long hours for short money, besides those that simply dropped by, at first staring heavily into space, their books, their newspapers. A good proportion soon gave up this deception, quickly coming round to our way of thinking. Pleased that their lonely existence had been broken into by these strange men with their gallant, pathetic jokes and such obvious overtures. Bernie, regardless of his age, always managed to get hold of them immediately. He appeared to have a seventh sense about this female flotsam. He would get up from his seat and without so much as please, thank you or may I? Would “sit down beside them” it mostly worked, much to our unanimous disgust. In no time he would be chatting away as if they were his long lost daughters... Some, a few, would finish up in the narrow bed with him in the narrow room he rented from Albert, cigarette burns dotting the bedding and the carpet.


What really needled was that when he quickly finished with them he would pass them on, giving one of his twisted leers as I was overlooked. He and I had gone on like that for many, many years; especially as I started taking leaves from his book... getting in first... this really choked him. It had never occurred to me that I actually had to talk to people if I wanted something; that I had to put myself out and about. That much I had him to thank for.

Possibly the volume of noise, the vibrations that came from the white painted shop with its two broken steps and the sagging door, maybe this attracted people - drew them from their loneliness, their comparative isolation, somewhere for them to go, someone perhaps to talk to. No furtiveness in John’s, everything very loud, very open. An immediate appraisal of any woman that walked through the ever open doorway, especially those emitting signals from between their thighs, sitting at first on the one isolated chair with its own small table at an angle to the shop, unable to conceal their legs other than tightly crossing them. Nothing missed... what else do men have to look at? To think about? Once they are out, free of their wives... hardly “Man’s position in Time and Space”... had long decided that there are only two aspects in a man’s existence. Money and Sex... either way round. Certainly many men come out with lofty ideas... hardly trust them when they are alone... with no one to play with other than themselves. Usually it is this type, puffed with their own importance, which are the biggest deviates. Various female friends of mine have always stipulated that their best clients for the whip and other interesting pursuits are always in the higher echelons of society. A cab driver is mostly satisfied with the odd blow job and straight back to work.