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On a visit to my local coffee shop to grab some lunch I ran into Ivor, one of the neighbourhood eccentrics.

There’s something of a garden gnome about him; he’s quite small, very crumpled and has a face that’s been sculpted in clay. Like Robin Cook, without the beard.

‘Hello Ivor,’ I hailed.

“Hello. I know you, don’t I?” In truth, most people avoid Ivor, so he’s always grateful for a conversation. “You’re the man with cats.”

My brow furrowed. ‘No Ivor. You’re getting me confused with someone else.’

“You’re the one with cats. You’ve got two cats.”

‘No I haven’t.’

“Yeeees you have. A tabby and a ginger.”

‘No Ivor really, I don’t have cats. Not at all.’

He stared at me, blankly, trying to reconcile his version of the truth with my strenuous denial.

“Are they dead, then? Well, you didn’t  look after them very well, did you?”

He stood up, adjusted his cap, thrust his hands into his pockets and strode out of the shop, passing two old dears on their way in, who sat at the next table to me.

Ivor turned and hollered: “You wanna watch out, you know. The cat protection people will be after you. Killing cats.”

I spent the next ten minutes avoiding eye contact with a couple of Medusa’s great aunts.

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On the wall of my local coffee shop, there is a photo of men playing cards. Well, to be more precise, a photo of men playing cards IS the wall. It’s a mural, and it dominates the room.

There are six men sitting at a circular table. The two with their backs to us are the oldest – my guess is mid-60s and above. The snow white hair, the sallow skin, the hunched shoulders. We can’t see their faces, but everything else about them says ‘age’.

At the centre of the shot, facing us across the table, is a bald man in his early 60s. Crumpled jacket, slightly unshaven – he didn’t come out that morning expecting to pose for a photo.

The other three are at least ten years younger. One carries too much weight, so his age is hard to judge; the other two players are late forties. On the right, a man in a roll-necked sweater, his hair dark enough to have been dyed. Opposite him, the youngest of the group, thinning hair swept back, sideburns – a cross between Quentin Cooper and Jack Nicholson.

As I look at one half of the dirty dozen, there’s a marked contrast between the people in the picture and the people in the room. The image is of community, of friendship, of shared activity. The reality is one of isolation; every person in here at this moment is cocooned in his/her newspaper/MP3/email personal bubble.

Actually, sitting between me and the mural there is a couple. She, of Chinese origin, looking over the shoulder of her companion. He, in dark rim glasses and green anorak, going through the morning’s mail. His body language says ‘hurry’; her’s says ‘let me be somewhere else’.

Even the people here who are with someone, are on their own.

On another wall, a very large poster hangs like a tapestry. It shows a close-up of the card game. Although it only depicts hands, cuffs and sleeves, it’s easy to see that it’s the youngest man in the mural that has just won the trick in the game. His hand is spread, covering the small pile in the middle of the table. The older man next to him cradles his remaining cards in cupped palms.

It’s a moment of visible triumph and hidden reserves. It has movement and calm, gain and loss, exclamation and secrecy. And it’s a masterpiece of subliminal communication.

Over the PA, it’s a mix of light classics and smooth jazz. A saxophone glides overheard, conjuring images of men in dark suits, bootlace ties and casual sophistication. Ditto, the faux brick wall – a manufactured wall covering to give the impression of an absence of wall covering. We are in a reclaimed New York warehouse where interesting people of Italian extraction hang out, not a retail unit in Berkshire.

The coffee shop may be one of a chain, which in turn may be one of many chains that have sprung up in the last 10 years. And it may be a new physical presence in this particular High Street, but it wants its customers to believe it has roots.

Because the illusion it presents is not just about location; it’s also a displacement of time.

Sepia pictures on the wall ask for a suspension of disbelief; this is  not a manufactured authenticity. This is authentic authenticity. “While we know that you know that this was designed last year on a PC with digital precision, we want you to suspend that knowledge, and look at our world through the distorted lens of tradition.”

Hence, the room is brown, the colour of yesterday.

Compare it to the coffee bars of the 1950s and 60s, with their polished chrome chair legs, wipe-clean formica tabletops, and primary colour walls. Coffee bars then reflected (excuse the pun) an optimistic view of tomorrow – like space stations running on cappuccino froth.

Today, we have seen the future and we don’t like it. So we crave for yesterday, because it’s safe. It happened, we got through it, and we’re here to tell the tale. So global retailers give us an environment that’s more than just a place to drink coffee.

It’s a place of refuge.

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