Artist and academic Dani Abulhawa has challenged herself to try and visit the café everyday - here are her thoughts... keep reading to see if she makes it!
Day 1 – Thursday 5th March
I entered tentatively, unsure of what to expect and was greeted with a kind hello by two women wearing pineapple fascinators on their heads. “Are you taking-away or staying?”
I ordered a coffee, was asked to take and seat and told that it would be brought to me. I chose a two-person table against the wall and sat facing the door, adjacent to a couple who were at either end of bigger table, one eating a bowl of Alpen and the other tucking into a meat roll. The woman eating Alpen was familiar to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on how I knew her.
My coffee was served in a big circular cup with hearts all over it and a saucer. The milk was in a little jug in the shape of a cottage.
There was a very inviting table of cakes and several large chalk boards against the wall detailing things like, ‘breakages’, ‘takings’, ‘complaints’, and ‘covers’.
I was asked if I wanted to choose the next record to play and picked an exercise record by – I think – Jane Fonda.
On the tables were instructions for ordering, getting the attention of Hunt and Darton and rules of tea-drinking etiquette. There were also instructions for games you can play with the food.
When I paid I was given a loyalty card and received my first pineapple stamp.
This place is a bit out-of-the-ordinary, but still a working cafe peppered with absurdity, and then there are sudden moments of arrest, for example the moment when Hunt and Darton got up and stood in the centre of two tables (one of which was occupied by patrons) and performed a short signaling routine at each other across the café.
I thought about the fine line between ordinary café and theatrical performance that this project treads, and then I thought about how much of ‘ordinary’ life is also treading this line.
Day 2 – Friday 6th March
After getting back from work to Manchester train station, I decided to pop in again at the café. It was sexy day.
Hunt and Darton and the other people working in the café (whose names I don’t know yet) were all wearing aprons with naked torsos on them, and with a hole in the area around the crotch. Hunt mentioned that she liked these aprons because there was an ambiguity about the torso’s gender.
As it was sexy day there were two stand-out options on the cake table; one was a giant penis-shaped layer cake, complete with icing ejaculation, and the other was a tray of glorious pink nipple cakes (with cherries for nipples). I went for the penis, and in particular a slice from the balls end.
As I sat eating it, I struggled a bit, not able to completely shake the idea of eating actual penis from the cake penis I was eating – you eat with your eyes. How much of the pleasure of eating, I wondered, is actually based on thoughts about the dish?
Day 3 – Saturday 7th March
I had completely forgotten that today was Pigeon Theatre’s take-over of the café, so not only did I get two cups of coffee and the biggest glass of chocolate and banana Nesquik, I also got to do some smell identification and memory tasks with Pigeon’s Anna Fenemore and Gillian Knox.
I was pleased to hear that the penis cake had been completely sold out. I was keen to find out which end people had gone for. Apparently the balls end was the most popular and I had a good discussion with Hunt and Darton in which we hypothesised the findings. The balls were covered in chocolate shavings, and constituted the bigger part of the cake, so we decided there wasn’t much scope for a psychoanalytic reading of people’s choices.
Today, my table had the delightful Scots Guard Captain and Bear ornaments, complete with green snooker-table tablecloth.
Day 4 – Sunday 8th March
I had a very short window for a trip to the café today.
I ordered a coffee and said I would like a piece of the Oreo cake that had been dutifully made after a young girl requested it the day before. As it was ‘You Do It Day’ I served myself.
Whilst I was there, a friend happened to come in with someone I didn’t know. I ended up sitting with them around the table that Alpen lady and her husband had been sat on earlier in the week.
Every time I’ve been in the café someone I know has been there. It’s strange, but then the café caters for both the geographically situated community of Manchester city centre (near the train station) as well as the performance/art/festival community who are more dispersed.
The mug I was given was in the shape of a large mouse head. I think it may have been the same mug that Alpen lady’s husband was drinking from, which was odd since I was also sat in his seat.
I kept thinking about one of the signs in the café on the wall. It reads ‘semi-socially engaged’. I like the way it comments upon an arts/performance jargon and suggests that the café adopts an undefined status as ‘socially engaged’, not proclaiming a particular kind of social efficacy or smugness.
