Bill’s

Breakfast at Bill’s. Trying to get through your twenty minutes with the paper without getting an elbow in the eye from a hassled shopper queuing to buy some organic spring onions, right? Feeling like all the red-shirted assistants resemble the arch baddy’s employees running around his lair just before Bond manages to blow the place up, right? Wrong and wrong. Just if you haven’t noticed, Bill’s has extended, shifting the Outdoor Place over the road, and now the eating section and the food section are two distinct areas. Which makes for a much more relaxing experience when you pop in for a cappuccino, which I did on Wednesday morning.

It’s not my usual thing, a cappuccino. Too milky. I usually go for the macchiato (‘stained’ in Italian, ie ‘stained with milk’ rather than completely diluted with the stuff). But I want, just this once, something that won’t be over in two sips. Something I can make last a bit. It comes with a smile, and a stripe of chocolate over the top of the froth. Unlike the coffees you get in some establishments, it doesn’t look like an ice cream. It’s still too milky for my taste (I like my curries hot, my pasta salty and my hot beverages bitter), but it’s a lot better than I expected: there’s still a sizeable hit of coffee. I’ve got a table to myself, and get through half the newspaper before I’m finished, and realise I’m late for work. No elbows, no stress, no clock-face counting down to zero. Just an extremely pleasant interlude in my journey to work. AL