A Breakfast Minefield

Under a watchful eye. The Gorilla, I mean, not the gurners

That gorilla watched me all through breakfast on Friday morning. He must’ve known that I was on a diet, and wanted to make me feel guilty if I chose the pancakes. He seemed to soften a bit when he saw that I’d gone for the yoghurt and fruit.

The fact that I chose what i believed to be a healthy option, rather than the Full English, should be enough for him to realise that I am serious about losing weight, but he never took his eyes off me, just in case I wavered.

I was in The Butterfly Cabinet, a trendy eaterie in Heaton, Newcastle. It was a weekday morning out of season, and I had thought that maybe we could just wander in and pick a table by the window. But I hadn’t bargained for the flood of students that descend on that place every morning of the week (shouldn’t they be studying or something? And leaving the cafes to us hard working part time taxi drivers? See previous post). And so I queued to get in. That won’t happen when I’m a famous writer, I can tell you.

When we eventually managed to get in, the only empty table was the one in the corner. I suspect it is always the last one to go as no one wants to tuck into sausage and bacon under the disapproving gaze of the resident primate. It reminded me of a similar gorilla in Dawlish, Devon, which looked out at people from behind the fence of a crazy golf course. The people living over the road from the course complained to the council that it was “looking directly into their bedrooms.” So the council turned the gorilla around – and promptly added another one next to it.

I scanned the cafe to check out the type of people it attracted. Apart from people like me, there was quite a varied group in, and not all of them looked like students avoiding work. There were Heavy Metal T shirt wearers, Burkha wearers, a Goth couple who were all tattoos and dark clothing, and a woman in a knitted hat and short corduroy skirt who looked like she may have been going home afterwards to write a poem or do something creative with clay.

I did wonder why it was called the Butterfly Cabinet. But a quick scan of the dining area revealed some butterflies. In a cabinet. Well, that goes some way towards explaining the name, but going by that criteria it could just have easily been named “The Gurners Gallery” or “Toilets This Way.”

The food that my fellow diners were tucking into looked fantastic, and if I wasn’t so keen on becoming smaller over the next few weeks I would’ve gone for the banana pancakes, or the sausage sandwich. I really loved my yoghurt and fruit but I ate with one covetous eye on everything else that came out of the kitchen. If ever you get yourself there, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

When I get down to my ideal weight I’m going back for the Full English. And I won’t give a monkey’s about what the gorilla thinks of that.