Opinion - Fran Galpin

Café Zero & Costa Packet… How sad that Jess Wood thinks a pertinent reason for the émigrés from London to remain in Lewes is because they can drink coffee in the same familiar environments they left behind in the Big Smoke. She has obviously never looked beyond the plastic facades of the ubiquitous coffee chains. Perhaps she would be even more thrilled if Starbucks were to join the throng. Personally I find there is little need for either Costa or Zero, when just a few steps away one can find decent coffee, pleasant staff, and nice environs up and down the High Street: the Riverside Café (with the added bonus of the finest sandwiches in the universe), Steamer Trading, The Needlemakers, The Long Room (... where incidentally, I still can’t find the stock of gardening twine… whoops... bit of a time warp there)... Bill’s fine emporium, which has the nicest ambience outside of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, if you only you could get a seat... (no doubt too many exiles discussing the revolution on the streets of Hampstead.) Lewes still has the last vestiges of a vibrant High Street, and to bemoan the fact that it has only Caffé Nero to save it from it being a ‘dreary provincial town’ is churlish in the extreme. Perhaps a little thinking outside the box is required.