A Gift from the Comfort Food Café: Celebrate Christmas in the cosy village of Budbury with the most heartwarming read of 2018!. Debbie Johnson
make other people happy while feeding them carrot cake.
There’s even some kind of weird vibe where they match people up with their favourite comfort foods – like me and jam roly-poly, which always reminds me of my nan. I must have mentioned it at some point, but I don’t remember when – all I know is when I’m especially down or tired, that’s what will be waiting for me there, even if it’s not on the menu.
I still vividly remember the first time I came here. It was a couple of weeks after we’d made the move to Dorset – after leaving Jason, I lived with my parents for a while, but I soon realised that was a mistake. I knew I needed to get away properly, and started looking for a place with enough distance for a fresh start, but close enough to Bristol for me to get back and see my parents, and potentially for Saul to see his dad, if that’s how things played out. It’s not, but such is life.
Mum, amazingly, helped me find the money to move here – something to do with a ‘nest egg’ that my nan had left – but it took some sorting. Jason resisted initially, made some half-hearted attempts to persuade me to come back, but it felt hollow and fake – we were better off without each other, and we both knew it. Eventually he moved himself as well, all the way to Glasgow – fresh starts all round.
It was harder than I thought, though, leaving. Setting up on my own in a new place where I knew nobody, with a baby. I’d thought it was what I needed – but I didn’t factor in how lonely I’d feel in those first few weeks. I had to stop myself from giving in, from calling my parents or Jason, from back-sliding.
Saul was almost eighteen months by that stage, and bloody hard work. I can say it now, because I’m his mum and it’s in the past – but he was actually a bit of a demon child. Endless energy, constant battles, the terrible twos way before his birthday. I was exhausted, running on empty, and secretly convinced that my own child hated me. I had no idea how I was going to cope.
Then, one morning, I came here. To the café. Out of sheer desperation, really – the need to get out of the house and at least be in some proximity to the rest of the world. I was sitting there, Saul busily throwing bread soldiers at my head and mashing his egg up like it was his mortal enemy, feeling washed out and fatigued to the edge of insanity.
A woman I now know as Becca came up to me, and brought me toast. Not Saul – me. Then another lady, who I’d thought was a customer but turned out to be the owner of the café, Cherie Moon, came and took Saul away. She’s a big woman, Cherie, tall and robust, in her seventies with a weather-beaten face and wrinkles she wears with pride. She has a lot of long hair that she often has bundled up into a grey-streaked plait, and she has so much confidence that it practically oozes out of her.
Anyone else, I’d have worried about handing the baby over – more for their sake than his – but I just instinctively knew that Cherie could handle it. She’d walked him around the room, while I ate my toast and actually drank a hot beverage before it was lukewarm, and the sense of relief I felt was astonishing. In fact I had to disappear off to the toilets for a minute to compose myself – by which I mean sob relentlessly into wadded-up tissue paper.
These random acts of kindness – aimed at me, a complete stranger – were my introduction to the café. To the village. To the community that now, almost two years on, I am starting to dare to call my own.
It’s taken a long time, because I am wary and stubborn and always cautious about random acts of kindness, but I understand it all better now. This place is like the island of misfit toys, and someone is always on hand with a sticking plaster and a spoonful of medicine for the soul.
These days, our lives are tied up with theirs in ways I could never have anticipated. The café gang help me out with childcare. I help them out with other things. We all look out for each other. It’s like a big, tangled, misshapen ball of string, all directions leading to each other.
I’m still not the life and soul of any of the parties the café hosts or organises – I still dodge the big social events – but I’m getting there. Edging towards a security and comfort that I’ve never known since my nan died.
Saul thinks this place is home. He’s little – he doesn’t remember a life before it. He thinks Lynnie is his wacky granny, and Willow is a cartoon character because of her pink hair, and Cherie is the queen of the world.
He thinks Laura, who manages the café, is the cuddliest woman ever, and that Edie May is a magical tiny-faced elf who lives in a teapot.
He thinks all the men of Budbury – and there are several – are there purely to play football with him, or take him for walks on the beach, or help him hunt for fossils. He thinks the dogs of Budbury – Midgebo, Laura’s black Lab, and Bella Swan, Willow’s border terrier, and her boyfriend Tom’s Rottie cross, Rick Grimes – are his own personal pooches.
I may have left behind my parents, and Jason, but what I gained was so much bigger – a whole village of the biggest-hearted people I’ve ever met.
He’s tugging at my hand as we approach the doors, his little legs pumping as fast as they can, like a puppy straining on the lead, desperate to get inside.
Inside, where a world of fun awaits. Where the café starts to get weird. Weird in a good way. There are lots of things you’d expect to find in a café – tables covered with red gingham cloths; a big fridge full of soft drinks; a chiller cabinet crammed with sandwich platters and salads and whopping great slices of cake; a serving counter and a till. So far, so normal.
Then there are the extras. The things that immediately let you know that you’re not in Kansas any more, Toto. The multiple mobiles hanging from the ceiling, dangling home-made oddities like old vinyl singles and papier-mâché fish. Half a red kayak. The oars from a rowing boat. Fishing net tangled up with fairy lights. The shelves lined with random objects – an antique sewing machine; a giant fossil in a cabinet; rows of books and board games and puzzles.
It’s like the anti-Ikea – as though the Old Curiosity Shop got together with a tea room and had a baby. Despite the clutter, though, it all still feels fresh and clean, and is washed over with the light flooding in through the windows on all sides.
On one side, you can see into the garden. On the other, it’s the sea and the beach and the endless red-and-gold clifftops stretching off along the horizon. It’s the kind of place you can lose hours, just watching the maritime world go by.
Saul bursts through the doors and strikes a dramatic pose, his little arms raised in the air, fists clenched, as though he’s Superman about to take off.
‘Everybody, I’m here!’ he shouts, just in case they hadn’t noticed. Laura is behind the counter, round and pretty and fighting a constant losing battle with her curly hair. She pauses in her work – slicing up lemon meringue cake – and her face breaks out into a huge smile.
‘Thank goodness! I was wondering when you were going to turn up!’ she says, wiping her hands down on her apron and walking out to see us. She crouches down in front of Saul and gives him a cuddle which he returns so enthusiastically she ends up sitting on her backside, his face buried in her hair.
I start to apologise, but she looks up at me and raises an eyebrow. That’s a stern telling off from Laura, so I clamp my mouth shut.
Laura has two kids of her own – Nate and Lizzie, teenagers now – and understands children. She’s told me approximately seven thousand times that I need to stop saying I’m sorry about Saul, when he’s only doing what kids of that age do. She continues to stare at me, over the tufts of Saul’s hair, but I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong this time, so I pretend not to notice.
I look around, and see Cherie sitting at a corner table, her feet in red and green striped socks, propped up on the chair next to her. Her husband Frank, who is an 82-year-old silver fox, is sitting opposite, drinking his thick tea and reading the paper. They both look up at me, and grin widely. They must be in an extra good mood this morning.
There is an actual paying customer here, still wrapped up in walking gear, perusing a guide book as he eats his toast. The café is on the Jurassic