NUC: Café Trinity, Turnham Green

Today I ventured west, further west than I thought possible. It was a veritable odyssey over to a building near Acton used for storage spaces but refashioned into a band room for a certain drummer of mine, Jane. We are trying to rework a song for her course. Candidates thus far include A Design for Life by the Manic Street Preachers and Help by the Beatles, also Last Flowers to the Hospital by Radiohead and The Call by the Backstreet boys, just to add a touch of class to the line-up. We made some progress before decamping to this café for a coffee wind-down.

It somehow reminds me of the cafés of Southampton, situated here in a place where the oppressive assault of the city hasn't quite eroded the quaint little-Englandness of the mythical yesteryears. The eponymous green stretches out to the left, a church of sorts to the right, a roundabout and a red phone box in the middle. Inside too, it's Southampton - it's 4:30 PM and empty, with bored staff talking amongst themselves, and little wooden round chairs screaming for someone to sit on them. We heed this call. The one other customer in here turns out to be working here. We order a cappuccino and a tea; the cappuccino is very fluffy.

There are a few tasteful paintings on the wall. The café is dark and green and warming. Despite the sun, the day is cold, but the deep colours take the edge off. The staff talk in a language I can't understand and I think one of them is nicer than the other. Jane and I talk about the art of drumming. I tell her that most of my drumming practice was done on the dashboard of a minivan in Australia, and that my favourite drummer is Abe Cunningham of the Deftones. For her, a Taiwanese band that I would not know inspired her to embark on a life of drums, and she's never looked back.

This café is not overwhelming. Maybe because we're the only ones here? It's safe though. Or maybe that's the problem - too content with being a merely safe café to be in, and little more. Upstairs it gets more loungey. Out the front dark wooden tables face outwards towards the road and the confusion - a new bus every twenty seconds, a mother and pram, a jogger and dog walker. Yes, some of London's suburban traits have found there way here after all.