Tag: cafe

Tinder: 10 tips for better profile pictures

thegirlinthecafe

OK, I know what you are going to say. You are going to say – OMG are you on Tinder? (If you have been living under a rock – Tinder is a hugely popular online dating app.) Well let me put this a little in perspective – I recently spoke with some people about Tinder. Not that we are seriously looking for dates (or maybe some of us are) but the popularity of this app is intriguing me so I had to check it out. Just a little warning – if you want your self-confidence diminished in no time – Tinder is for you.

Tinder is highly focusing on what you look like (no luck there then) – and you can either swipe people to the left (meaning: you might be a lovely guy but nah – let’s not meet) or to the right (oh you look alright – shall we have tea?). In this fast-moving world we live in now this is the way to judge or getting judged. So if you are into Tinder there is no need to emphasize the importance of a proper profile picture.

After some Tinder experimenting – checking profile pictures have been entertaining to say the least but mostly for the wrong reasons. So people of the Tinderverse – let me share a few tips regarding profile pictures with you.

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42 (+ 2 days)

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Devon Cream Tea in the Wayside Cafe

It’s really not bad to spend your 42nd birthday with your best friend in a cafe in Widecombe-In-The-Moor having a cream tea that looked as good as this and tasted as good too.

We also visited Princetown which is known for the prison. And if you have seen Lucky Break (which of course you have, as Bill is in it) then you might recognize the prison. Lucky Break has partly been shot in Dartmoor Prison.

In Princetown I had my first Knickerbocker Glory ever (good experience) in a cafe built in their old police station.

And we also visited Exmouth which is a lovely town on the coast. And Budleigh which is an even lovelier small town on the coast with a pebbled beach and red cliffs in stead of the white chalky ones. Most importantly here though is that they sell the best ice cream I have tasted in Britain so far.

My birthday was perfect, and my weekend was too.

Last year I was hoping that the year ahead would have me make my short film. I did not quite manage to pull that off but I am still quite confident that SweetArts will be shot in October this year.

To climb a mountain

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Last Monday I put my teeth in it, it was quite heavy to chew and it took a couple of days to get back into the writing groove. But I am in it, and spend most of the weekend in a cafe in Fulham, together with Billy, Milky Way Tea, the soundtrack of DIRL and the will power and persistence to finish this script.

I had several problems to solve in the script and it felt like an impossible task, something like climbing the Mt. Everest. This weekend I was relaxed enough to take one step at the time, and it is very close now, actually, it is so close that I dare to say that it will be finished this week.

Now “finished” sounds very final but scripts never are. With finished I mean that it will be in a state of which I am happy enough to send it to some friends to read. To get some comments from the real world.

So that’s how I have spend my weekend: writing in a cafe. There isn’t much I’d rather do.

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Things that make my Friday

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Radiohead

I don’t know if this is going to be a returning post kind of thing. I do know that I try to stop running every now and then, to reflect a bit on life and appreciate the good things, however tiny they are.

  1. We are casting for our short (1 minute) short. Here is some detail from the description:

    “Our ‘City Gent’ is aged 50+, distinguished / greying and MUST be able to raise one eyebrow (Roger Moore style).”

    I bit my tongue to not say that the reference to Roger should be replaced by a reference to the master of eyebrow acting (I am in therapy, can you tell). We already got four responses, and tough job to read emails from actors with photos attached. Now you understand why I want to be a film maker.

    As my Cookie film has a protagonist of about the same specs, I am more than interested to see what responses we get. Dan might be among them! We will shoot this short short next weekend, the 21st of October.

  2. There have been some new sign ups for The Girl In The Cafe on tour and both of them are from the state of New York, one from NYC and one from Ithica. Apparently the project has been spoken about on the university of Ithica, which was the reason Michele signed up. She also told me what her professor has said about the project:

    My professor is teaching a class on the emotional and personal effects technology has on people. We brought up social networks such as geo-cacheing and wheresgeorge.com. Then she added that she had heard somewhere (she couldn’t remember where) about this great film that was being passed around the world. She thought it was neat that it created a new forum for people to discuss movies and world issues. She also said that projects like yours and post-secret are the future of social connections in an increasingly technological world. Basically, though, she thought that the fact that this movie can reach even areas where movies are usually unavailable is one of the few productive and positive effects of the new digital era.

    Things that makes my Friday. Ithica is a nice reference to this, I hope her road is a long one indeed.

  3. Bill Nighy reads Eric Clapton again tonight on BBC4, 9.15pm. Tune in and rock on. Missed it last week? Here you go. Next week the new Charles Paris starts, to celebrate that I found the previous Charles Paris files and fed them to my iPod. What can I say – things that make my Friday
  4. 33 days to New York.
  5. When you get great news, and I mean roaringly great fantastic news, how do you react? Do you grab your iPod and start dancing? I do. I did that yesterday and danced the night away. I know you want to know what that great news is, but I can’t tell you just yet. Also because it is not 100% sure yet, but then, what is a 100% sure in life.
  6. I had a breakfast of Tea with biscuits this morning.
  7. I just downloaded the new Radiohead album. (At last, it was impossible to get through to the website the last few days). The rhythem in “15 Step” plugs directly into my heartbeat. In a good way, I love that song. Go download it, you can set your own price. It is currently being played in our office. (Things that make my Friday)
  8. I have slowly started to look around for a potential new cafe. I was going to visit the Regency Cafe which is literally around the corner where I live, but their opening hours are a bit weird. They are closed between 14.30 and 16.00 and I was there, of course, at 14.35. They are closed on Sundays too.

    In stead I went to the Astral Cafe which is diagonally opposite Regency Cafe. This is not going to be my place either (both Regency and Astral are too close to where I live) but I will return there for food. You can eat things like Spaghetti for £4 and a cup of tea is only 80p.

  9. Al Gore wins the Nobel prize.
  10. It’s nearly weekend and this weekend I will be in screen writing class again. I look forward to get comments on both my Cookie script and my 35 pages of feature film.

And how is your Friday going?

the girl on the (new piccadilly) cafe

thegirlinthecafe 9 Comments

New Piccadilly Cafe
New Piccadilly Cafe, London

I like this picture so much, I just use it again.

So I did the interview today. I can’t even remember what I said, it might have been utter rubbish. I do recall mentioning Bill Nighy and the movie. I think I also said that it was the first place I felt at home in London. That I always order soup and a coke there, or that I don’t actually have to order it because they just know. That I have enjoyed time there waiting for a film or a theatre play to start. And that it is horrible that it closes and that it makes me absolutely sad. I also recall that I wanted to say a million other things but somehow couldn’t find the words – it’s the camera in my face syndrome, I get nervous.

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The Girl and The (New Piccadilly) Cafe

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New Piccadilly Cafe
The Cafe In quieter times …

I was visiting my Cafe today – because I still can. Because I like to be there. Because I needed a place to unstress and think. Because I felt like having a bite to eat and a cup of tea. But things are changing. The Cafe has had a lot of attention lately and newspapers writing about its closure have made people go there. New visitors, but also people who have been regulars for years are visiting while they still can. For me it felt a bit like a tourist attraction today. It was crazy busy and people were queueing for a table, which is something I have never seen before. I tried to read in peace and quiet but it was not really possible. When I walked in The Table was free which was great. But after 10 minutes, a man asked if he could sit opposite me.

Of course he could, I moved my soup plate and Parmesan cheese to the side and was about to think that I felt like being in the scene of a film I knew too well. But 5 minutes later his wife stepped in and sat down beside him, I woke up and saw that he didn’t really look like Lawrence either. It was annoying, they were loud and I didn’t really want to have them at my table. So I left quicker than I had planned, had a short chat with The Owner of THE Cafe and left with mixed feelings.

Yesterday I got another email from someone who is making a Documentary about the Cafe. I decided not to participate the last time I got asked because it was being made by people who didn’t even live in London, and I was in doubt about why they wanted to do it. I didn’t feel that the Cafe was more to them than a subject for a documentary.

Apart from that, I hate being filmed.

This time however it seems like a project with a heart for The Cafe. It is made as a thank you to The Cafe and the people working there, a collection of memories from people who came there regularly and who are passionate about the place. That sounded right in my ears so I said yes. It’s not for TV, it’s a documentary that at some point maybe will be used in an exhibition.
If all goes as planned, I will go there tomorrow for a talk. About my The Cafe.

I put on two kisses

thegirlinthecafe 7 Comments

Two men on a DVD cover

I don’t know why it took me this long, I guess because I all the time hoped that it wouldn’t close. That and because I am shy. So I waited for a quiet moment where there weren’t too many people around.

It’s more than a year ago, I talked about it with him. And suddenly there is only two and a half week left before it’s over and done with THE Cafe.

“Of course. Where do you want me to write?”
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I have no words

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New Piccadilly Cafe, London

BBC London picked up on the closure of the beautiful New Piccadilly Cafe, you can watch the video clip here.

Meet Lorenzo, watch the waiters in their white uniforms, hear the bells of the cash register, enjoy the gargling pink coffee machine, check out the funky 50’s menu card and recognize scenes of The Girl in the Cafe.

And feel sad, angry, frustrated and heart broken about the fact that this is happening. That’s what I do.

This makes me very sad

thegirlinthecafe 10 Comments

The end of the New Piccadilly Cafe seem to be nigh now. Nigh means 22nd or 23rd of September 2007.

All I can say is: go visit it if you haven’t done so.

I can’t imagine any other place in London where I would go when having a writers block, feeling depressed, wanting to read or just to drink a coke with a pink straw. News like this makes me hate London.

Take me somewhere I can call a home

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London Thames
I met up with 2 girls in the Starbucks on Leicester Square, and after some text communication about what we looked like, we found each other. We were going to see Prime. Prime was actually quite fun to watch, a real girls night out film, and if you love films like Love Actually you probably like this one too. Meryl Streep is hilarious, and they luckily chose the not too obvious endning. (a 7.5 for this one)

But this wasn’t the highlight of the evening for me.

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