And so, the end has come...
Hunt and Darton Week 3
Day 11 – Wednesday 18th March
I got to the café late afternoon and was delighted to see Holly Darton was back. After the disappointment of Sunday I needed a lift.
Dave had agreed to come and meet me for Unhappy Hour and ordered the roast sandwich – a beast of a snack consisting of three huge slices of bread (the middle one soaked in gravy) with a filling of roasted veg and your choice of either chicken, beef or nut roast.
During Unhappy Hour Hunt delivered poetry from her ‘It’s a Shitter’ series and Darton discussed living with her mother-in-law. Towards the end of the evening Hunt and Darton both changed into a costume from one of their earliest performance together. Their identical outfits consisted of a one-piece swimming costume (flowery pattern on centre panel) underneath a pair of jodhpurs, and a pair of half-wellies. They then proceeded to reenact the performance together, which involved a sequence of thrusting movements combined with text.
Afterwards Dave said, ‘It made me think, why can’t all cafés be like this?’ and I said, ‘I know. That’s exactly what I thought when I first came here’.
Day 12 – Thursday 19th March
On Thursday it was social media day, which meant that you had to order everything using twitter and then Instagram your food and drink. I sat on table three and ordered a Tunnocks tea cake and some tea.
Sat on table two was Rachel Dobbs from Low Profile, who is taking over from Holly Darton tomorrow. Rachel and I have Plymouth in common, so I started with that, and did that ridiculous thing of being a bit over-excited about meeting her.
For this week, Hunt and Darton have had a general costume change, with broccoli headdresses instead of pineapple. Their dresses are also made from a broccoli fabric; it’s important that the fruit to be used has a matching fabric. Hunt explained, ‘Broccoli is a super-food’ and that pineapples were initially decided upon because of their glorious shape and their excellent plume of leaves, but it turns out their relevance runs deeper with symbolism connected to hospitality, rarity, richness and theatricality. The café is all of these things.
Day 13 – Friday 20th March
On entering I realised it was sexy day because of the torso aprons and, of course, a new penis cake – already the balls had been eaten. I sat with Martin (the man who asked Hunt to marry him last week) on table six.
As it was sexy day, Hunt and Rachel Darton were asking customers for song suggestions that were either about sex or that made you feel sexy. Over on table two a young couple suggested ‘my neck, my back’, a remix of an early noughties song about cuntilingus layered onto the Thomas the Tank Engine theme.
As the song played out in the café, the guy on table four turned around to us and said, ‘my mother’s coming to meet me in a minute’. I laughed, and felt his embarrassment, and hoped that she wouldn’t walk in whilst this song was still on.
The next hour passed quickly with Martin telling me all about the National Fairground Archive in Sheffield and asking me whether I’d like to go with him back to Macclesfield. ‘Sorry, no’ I said, ‘I’ve got a life here in Manchester’. Throughout the night Martin kept looking over at Hunt and Darton and then turning to me to say, ‘they’ll be gone next week, I’m going to miss them’. ‘Me too’, I replied.
During Unhappy Hour Hunt recreated her MA performance, which involved fashioning a seesaw out of a café sign and a bowl and then placing a glass on one end. Hunt then had to stand with a bottle of wine in one hand, stamp down on the other end of the seesaw and try to catch the glass with her free hand as it was sent into the air. If she caught it she then had to fill the glass with wine and drink it in one.
After several smashed glasses, Hunt opened up the challenge to customers, and Rachel Darton selected the Benny Hill theme as backing track. I am constantly impressed by how open people are and how unpredictable the café is.
The night ended with table four guy’s mother singing an amazing karaoke version of Total Eclipse of the Heart.
Day 14 – Saturday 21st March
I planned two visits to the café today, one to meet Rachel in the afternoon, and one later on. Rachel and I sat on table one – my first time in the window. We drank tea whilst waiting for Max’s chocolate orange cake to be finished, and talked about how the café is read by people passing on the high street.
From the outside it looks like a trendy pop-up café, and once you’re inside the vintage furniture and mismatched cups and saucers could equally belong in a quirky Northern Quarter coffee shop. Even the cardboard signs – perhaps a nod to the typical contemporary theatre prop and in keeping with the overall low-fi aesthetic – could be a design choice in a contemporary culture valorising ‘make do and mend’, recycling and the idiosyncrasies of the made-at-home and hand-written.
The look and feel really invites you in and then you quickly realise you’re not in Kansas anymore. It’s like a portal to another world. And in all the times I’ve visited it’s clear how much people are willing to experience it, to take a chance and to play along.
Music is a central part of the lure of the café. The Sugarhill Gang draws in an unlikely group of teenagers who, on entering, quickly realised it wasn’t an ordinary café. They gladly took badges and left.
Later on I came back for Unhappy Hour and met Martin again. We sat on table five, and he bought me a bottle of Becks. Mark was the guest waiter tonight. Martin kept referring to Mark as my boyfriend. ‘He’s not my boyfriend, he’s someone I met here a few days ago’ I say. Martin was having nothing of it. ‘Tell your boyfriend to come over here’. The evening ended with more glass smashing and karaoke.
Day 15 – Sunday 22nd March
Today it was ‘austerity day’, so the usual pineapple table decorations had been replaced with potatoes. Instead of a cake table full of different options, each plate was piled with Blue Riband biscuits, and Hunt asked customers to consider their purchases carefully, she suggested, ‘perhaps you could share a pot of tea?’
In a strange case of synchronicity, a lady walked in from the street and started asking the customers on table one for money. Hunt quickly noticed what was happening and diverted the woman’s attention away from them to deal with the situation herself.
‘If I give her some money’, said Hunt, ‘it’s not the end of the relationship’. ‘You have to be careful about the culture you’re creating in the café’, and she told me about an incident that had happened in one of the earlier pop-ups in a different city where a group of homeless people had begun visiting regularly. One day a fight broke out between members of the group during which one man was badly injured.
As I sit and think about austerity in the café and in the UK as a whole, I reflect on how much richness, friendliness and entertainment is in these simple interactions between people (often strangers), talking, laughing, dancing and singing in this place.
Day 16 – Wednesday 25th March ‘Christmas Day’
Apparently whenever the café is open on the 25th of the month it becomes Christmas Day. As I approached I noticed a Christmas tree in the window, and on opening the door, the sound of Christmas carols. The café was quite full and sat at each table were people with cardboard signs around their necks. In front of me on table three was ‘wise man (myrrh)’, whilst over on table five Mark as ‘Jesus’ was sat opposite a woman as ‘shepherd’. As he left, ‘wise man (myrrh)’ handed me his sign – ‘you can be the wise man now’, he said.
I sat down with a woman called Catherine on table four, who had come wearing a Christmas jumper, which was very impressive. Hunt and Darton had been running a day-long Christmas quiz, which I joined in with. Today’s Darton was new and I don’t remember her first name.
As we moved in to unhappy hour, which was themed on unhappy Christmas memories, I was impressed with new Darton’s brilliant array of hilarious family Christmas stories.
The evening ended with more MA performance glass smashing/drinking and a rendition of Down Town by Petula Clark, with the phrase ‘down town’ changed to ‘Hunt and Dar-ton’, which worked surprisingly well.
I didn’t see Martin, but Tamsin said he’d been in earlier. I will miss him. In my conversations with him, Martin had always likened the café to a fairground or circus troup, moving from one city to another, bringing a magical experience that would suddenly disappear one morning. ‘It’s show business’, he would say.
I agree, the café is a lot like a circus, but as much in the place name sense of the term as anything else. For example, the circus in ‘Piccadilly Circus’, means a place in which several streets converge. Hunt and Darton café was for me a place were a range of different people converge, and not in the pseudo-social sense where we’re all together as strangers; together in an anonymous fashion. The café is where you quickly become part of a shared space, and make connections with other people.
After tonight Hunt and Darton will be gone. They will next be popping up in Folkstone, Kent; I’m really tempted to follow.