Behind the Broadway Theatre in Catford

A walk through quiet streets and parks --Hilly Fields and Ladywell Park -- to Catford. We discover the Stage Door Cafe nestled on the alley-lane behind the Broadway Theatre and the Town Hall and Civic Suite for the Borough of Lewisham.

Sir Steve Bullock serves as Mayor of the Borough.  We're proud of him for supporting the Living Wage Campaign and making the entire Borough a Living Wage employer, and he keeps the pothole repair crews busy.  We attend the Mayor's annual Valentine's Day Lavender Fund Fundraiser dinner.  This year we even took the rellies along!

Back to Catford ...I love the giant cat mascot slinking over the entrance to the shopping arcade -- source of great discussion and controversy.

Back to the Stage Door Cafe...classy enough for white collar workers and open early enough for blue collar workers, or should I say reflector-glo workers. A comfy place for early rising pensioners, too.


Pleasant decor: highlighting a set of framed theatre-themed super-size posters including the Chicago Theater by Wrigley Tower, Moulin Rouge dancers, and two Broadway New York scenes. Nice feel to the place and the friendly, animated wait staff, actually seem pleased for our custom.

Upscale calligraphied menu boards, comic font all caps -- quite posh.

Posted signs, "Customers are advised that during busy periods you may be required to share your table." Probably gets an overflow lunch crowd.

As for our brekky...we're happy with our 2x2 eggs and brown toast and enjoy our hot mug of builders tea --strong enough for the spoon to stay standing!  Not sure how I forgot a food photo -- must have just enjoyed it!

This place gets a "We'll be back." 
Another delightful Breakfast in Britain

Fat Belly's -- Who thinks of these names?!

A sign of a genuine breakfast cafe is a closing time mid-afternoon.  At Fat Belly's it's 3:00 pm. And, lucky for us, the opening time is 6:30 am.

The sky is still dark, as we're at the end of the second longest night of the year.  We've walked the length of Downham, in southeast London on the Bromley Road, passing three breakfast cafes. At the end of the commercial stretch, we loop back, crossing at a zebra crossing.

Happy Husband catches sight of a plain sign directing us toward, 'Mini-cars & Cafe'.  So we head off the main road, slipping behind a row of shops. 

There Fat Belly's cafe with tables and chairs under an awning beckons us.  Lights are on and the tiny cafe feels full to the brim -- obviously a local favourite.  We wonder if we'll get eats.  But a table directly beneath the front counter opens up, and in we slide, side by side up against the wall. Every table taken, all men, mostly in reflector jackets or vests - a glow of neon. 

Our hosts, a British couple, welcome us, "'Mornin' luv."  Turns out he, Ben, hails from North Cyprus and the wife is London born, her parents having immigrated from North Cyprus.  They explain that theirs is a "semi-arranged marriage." They've had the cafe for 13 years, and seem happy in southeast London.

Happy Husband decides to go whole hog and orders the set breakfast-- one of everything and a pile of beans!  I order my regular 2 x 2 (eggs and toast).  Piping hot tea in mugs arrives quickly.

A Delicious Southeast London Breakfast in Britain.

Breakfast in Deptford -- noted for Christopher Marlowe's demise

Our Borough of Lewisham in Southeast London has been listed recently as the "least safe" community in the United Kingdom.  Gang violence and knifings raise the figures.  There's nothing new about this reputation for Southeast London.  

We dine this morning merely a stone's throw from the pub where Christopher Marlowe met his tragic end in Deptford, Lewisham.  (Truth be told, as the leafy trees attest, I'm late in posting this visit to Deptford!)

But first let us walk along the streets of Lewisham between here and there. Past the quaint worker's homes of old and the mansions of Wickham Road, divided into flats and bedsitters for the immigrants from the West Indies a half century ago, now being scooped up by young professionals starting families, happy for the new rail lines that link Southeast London to the City with an easy commute.  

Past Friendly Gardens and the Ravensbourne River which winds its way through Lewisham to finally feed into the Thames at Deptford, 

Today, as often, Mr. Heron perches on branches overhanging the quiet stream,urban sentinel.

Lush flower boxes fill empty sills and entryways.

Garden allotments flourish under the loving hand of those who still crave fresh vegetables on their urban dinner tables.

Dickensian chimney pots scallop the skyline. One might expect a chimney sweep to pop out any moment with a bright, "Chim chim cheree." 

The "least safe" community in the United Kingdom.  Ah, how relative statistics such as these are to us who grew up with guns on the streets of Chicago and Washington D.C., and then spent years under the cloak of the violence of apartheid in South Africa, and finally fled Zimbabwe because of the government-condoned "thugs" ravaging our community in Plumtree, street by street, house by house.  "Least safe" in a land where even police officers do not carry firearms, and where we do not expect our neighbours to have a gun in the house.  Where we walk the streets at night actually expecting to arrive home without incident.

Except living in rural Mfanefile, Zululand, South Africa in the 1980's, I have never felt so safe in my home community.  We're not naive, but "least safe" in the UK means something different than "least safe" in the USA or South Africa!

We slip into Bianca Cafe on Deptford High Street, quiet now in the early morning hours.  Good hot food -- nothing like chips and beans for breakfast in Happy Husband's opinion!  I stick to my 2x2.  

Waves of customers fill the 18 seats. This place sparkles!  The premises are seriously clean -- even the seam where the tile floor meets the tiled wall! Our only complaints: Table 5 rocks, and the teabags arrive in our mugs, 

When shops open, we explore. High Street becomes an open-air market with tables laden with fish, plastic ware and fresh fruit and vegetables from foreign lands.

An unexpected treasure trove are the charity shops full of Ghanaian finery and saris.  

As we walk toward the Thames, hidden galleries and street arttreasures abound.  We'd heard that Deptford is famous for its Arts, but this is our introduction. Street art abounds -- murals, sculpture!  Quirky, moving, historic, beautiful!

Last, but not least, we "discover" the Parish Church of St Paul, hidden behind Council apartment blocks (public housing), almost upon the river bank, surrounded by a rose garden -- an oasis in the "least safe" corner of the UK.

We continue to the banks of the Thames, Greenwich to the east, Canary Wharf to the north. New expensive apartment highrises line the river.  Ah, Southeast London, rich and poor, old and new, side by side.  A great place to call home for a while.

Another delightful Breakfast in Britain!

Behind the face of Croydon -- the Piccolino

We catch a Southeast Train to Croydon, site of the original London airport where in 1938 Neville Chamberlain, looking through rose-tinted glasses,  famously declared, "Peace in our time."  Today Croydon, a buzzing urban centre, is home to the offices of the United Reformed Church Southern Synod.

Wandering around Croydon in Southeast London at 7:00 am searching for an open breakfast cafe proves a depressing endeavor.  Urban grey permeates the landscape with little greenery.  We discover the Lunchbox Cafe, but the proprietor sends us away though the sign on the open door claims the opening time has arrived. We find ourselves at the back side of the mall; seems Croydon has numerous behind-the-shops streets.

We finally find an open cafe --Piccolino's Snack Bar nestled in an arcade of shops inside an entire complex of derelict highrises. Ignoring the surroundings we duck inside.

A cheerful tile interior greets us, and the All-Day-Breakfast menu scrawled across the over-size chalkboard supplies ample options.
The proprietor greets us warmly with a smile and takes our order at our table.

We hungrily turn to breakfast -- tasty eggs and toast and delicious strong hot tea. We delight in the no-wobble tables, chairs free to slide back and forth, and the absence of any music or radio chatter.  We enjoy almost two hours of peace and quiet, working crossword puzzles and reading the morning news.

When we venture out again, the Croydon blend of derelict, handsome and modern buildings fascinates us. Like the local population, the blend is rich and intriguing.  Evidence of both WWII and economic hard times remain.

Everything has a bit of glitter once the sun shines and life fills the streets.

We note for our next Croydon sojourn the numerous early-morning breakfast cafes lining the open-air market.  We'll bee-line for them!

A Candle for my Father - from Greenwich to Tower Gate

Today I lit a candle at All Hallow's Church near the Tower for my father who died on Monday.  Today's tale of Breakfast in Britain is how I got there.

It's a glorious morning! The rain has stopped -- rain, rain, rain!  London has had more rain these past couple months than in recorded history...and that's a long time here.

We head out on foot, strolling through the Brockley Conservancy area with its rows of terrace homes, along the Ravensbrook River in Millbrook Park.  Daffodils line the path and blossoms fill the trees.

Even in the park there are signs of construction and maintenance -- Britain's on-going attempt to keep the ravages of time at bay --
replacing broken pavement, straightening sagging fences, painting peeling bridges.

We cross over the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) tracks, which only a few years ago opened up the area for commuters to the financial district of London.  The construction of ever more highrise apartment buildings are testament to the popularity of the idea.

These new expensive towers stand side-by-side with the Council Estate towers, the public housing that dots the London map.  We walk through the Coldbath Street Estate as we near Greenwich.  The view toward the city shimmers in the morning sunlight -- the Shard to the west, Canary Wharf to the East on the horizon.

Tempted to eat at our favourite Golden Cafe, we decide to try a different cafe this morning -- the Hot Pot Cafe on South Greenwich Street.  Like the Golden Cafe, the Hot Pot sits just outside the tourist mecca, so prices are local and reasonable (half the price of their counterparts two streets closer to the Greenwich market).

The bright cafe enjoys a steady stream of fluorescent jackets and hard hats, and assorted tools including a six-foot level -- feeding the men who work hard to keep London up and running.  As usual for these breakfast cafes, not a woman in sight, except me.


Happy Husband enjoys the perfectly runny fried eggs.  The mug of tea steams hot.

The decor is eclectic, for sure.  Pictures of cats, women in togas (looks a bit like a Victorian Greek harem), Eastern European ceramics, mountain scenes of Turkey perhaps, or Vietnam, and two original pieces of art spouting wisdom.



Greenwich is a great starting point for a London extravaganza -- which our day becomes.  We hop on the DLR at the Cutty Sark station, ride under the Thames and then over the canals of the Docklands, ending up at Toward Gate.

As members of the Royal Palaces, we can visit The Tower of London anytime, and we especially enjoy arriving before 10:00 am, before the crowds and strolling through the grounds, often with a quick view of the jewels, the coronation spoon and the gold baptismal fonts.  A good reminder of the disparity between the wealthy and everyone else.  A good reminder that fairy tales include very few characters who live happily ever after under crowns and ermine robes.

Today, rather than walk up the river to the city centre, we head up toward Cheapside.  Construction cranes tower over the city -- making old newer and squeezing in new wherever there is space. We come across a church we've never noticed before, behind the Tower Gift Shop. We slip inside.

We find ourselves on the site of Barking Abbey started in the 7th century, built over "one of the most perfectly preserved" sections of Roman pavement.  All Hallow's Church baptism registry shows William Penn (23 October 1644), and the wedding register displays the signatures of John Quincy Adams and his bride Louise in 1797.

 A Mariners' Chapel displays numerous model ships -- Happy Husband suggests they may have been off-loaded over the years by well meaning parishioners, like the toothpick Last Suppers found on too many church walls.

Breakfast in Britain, a solid start for another wonderful day in London!