With the possible exception of the retro 1950s-60s wallpaper, on the face of it this is an unremarkable picture of eleven women of a certain age (and certain class) sitting round a table. What it doesn’t tell is that: the table is in a cafe in a Waterstones bookshop; and that the group has taken over the corner for a book club meeting. A book club in a bookshop sounds perfectly reasonable, but that wallpaper reminds one of cafes in an earlier time when the expectation was eat up, pay up and get up, and loiterers were likely to be asked, ‘Haven’t you go a home to go to?’ Eurosceptics note the more civilised approach to cafe life we now embrace.
Photo: Waterstones, Cambridge, January 2012