I’m just enjoying Mark Knopfler on Spotify and on Wikipedia I see he describes his father architect as a Marxist agnostic. That almost fits me I reckon except replace agnostic with atheist. Not that that matters to anyone in the whole world, of course. Me and my friend Barbara have been in “a relationship” for getting on for 3 years now. We have been on trips across Ireland, to Edinburgh, Stockport and Dublin, Port Sunlight, Eccles, Sheffield and the National Gallery. Most of the time though, when she visits me two or three days a week, we go to Costa for a coffee and do two Quick Crosswords. Whatever time of day we go there – and it’s varied from before 9 a.m. to after 3.30 p.m. – we really like the various “atmosphere’s” each hour offers, from a quiet murmur of conversations from a few customers, through to a busy collection of laptop workers or business meetings and women of a certain age and dog owners or to a raucous din from some tables in a full café. The staff team are an example to us all of cool, cheerful friendliness as they serve everyone with extreme care and efficiency whatever the situation or whoever it is ordering drinks and food while chatting across the counter about themselves, the weather or just about anything at all. A cynic might say, “That’s their job. they get paid…”, but they all go well over and above that observation by a country mile.