Welcome!

I'm an accountant who would like to run a little cafe. A cafe where you feel at home, where you really rate the coffee, where you love the homemade cakes. A cafe whose walls are adorned with the work of local artists, and where you can buy unique and more often-than-not eco-friendly crafts and handmade items. Where you can find out about what's going on in the community, where you can sit and dream and plan and scheme. A cafe where the herbs in the salad were grown in the little yard out the back, and where the bread comes from an organic bakery round the corner, and where I greet you and am pleased to make your acquaintance.

I work from 9 to 5 every day, earning enough to sustain a comfortable north London existence. I get home and I put my bag down and get into the kitchen to listen to Radio 4 and to chop and fry and boil and bake things. It's the most relaxing and satisfying bit of my day.

I don't think I can start on the real cafe just yet. For a start there's a little person growing in my abdomen, who I am reliably informed will eat up all my time and energy when - god willing etc. - they come out of the womb and into the world. Then there's the issue of capital.

But I can plan, and practice. I can build a repertoire of failsafe recipes. I can scout around for the kind of art and objects I want in the shop. I can seek inspiration in other lovely cafes. I can elicit your opinions and I can create a little space here where I build up my dream with more and more detail. And then maybe one day it will creep out of cyberspace and into this tangible old world.

I want the cafe to be as sustainable and low impact as possible. I want the food to be healthy and delicious. I would love - though I know I'm getting really ambitious now - for it to be attached to a studio where yoga and photography and dance and painting and all sorts are taught.

So this blog will be a collection of all those things I want to pull together - the food, the green issues, the decor, the art and craft, the other activities that might take place, as well as some idle chit chat from me as I lean across the counter when it's quieter and strike up a conversation.

Welcome!