NUC: Blossoming Together, Deptford

The award for cutest name goes too Blossoming Together. They've only been open a handful of months, so I am told, and they're still getting going. But this lack of refinement makes the whole thing better, possesing a reality that most places don't have. They hail from Italy, and slot comfortably into this quiet pedestrianised road opposite Deptford High Street.

When I walked past and took a look in it felt like I was peering into someone's front room. A woman appeared, somewhat expectantly, somewhat suspiciously, with a cautious smile on her face. I went in and asked for a coffee. She seemed slightly thrown, as if I had asked for something unusual, like a rabbit or something. But, quickly she seemed to accept that this was indeed a café and coffees were a fairly ordinary request. First, she fumbles around finding me an suitable place to sit. It's not busy, so this shouldn't be too challenging. But, also, there's only a few tables. There's one woman reading at one table, and a young girl with toys at another. I join the woman, she with Kindle, me with paperback. The three of us briefly discuss the merits of each device and the prospects for the rainforest.

There's also a space downstairs. From the amount of noise I deduce that downstairs is bigger than up here. Apparently it's a sewing and colouring and braiding workshop, and it sounds like it's going well. This community-oriented project seems to be a principle theme for the café, and I think that's good. Although, I might add, I'm fairly indifferent to sewing.

There's no 'bar' as such in here. A sort of small table/cupboard loosely demarcates the bit of the room where coffees are made and cakes are sliced. The sides and walls are lined with ingredients. It's like when you go to someone's house and you see how much better their kitchen is than yours. But this is a comfortable kitchen to be in, easy on the eyes and bursting with culinary potential.

Our Italian hostess, after marveling at the brilliance of Deptford market for things such as prawns, soon runs out the door leaving her one available employee, only just recruited, to keep things in order. This was fine until the Kindle Woman wanted to pay for her drink. The till loomed like an unfathomable corrupted robot, teasing her with booby-trapped buttons that do who-knows-what. I came to the rescue with my paltry knowledge of rudimentary cash registers and between the three of us we managed to get £2 into it. Soon after, the hostess returns showing off a bag of prawns. I pay for my drink, promise to return to tell her about my studies, and head home.

NUC: Petitou, Peckham Rye

Once, en route to the estate agents. I walked past this place and thought, 'hmmm . . . ' Yes, useful vocabulary was replaced by general sentiments funneled into even more general sounds. Another time, I walked past and thought, 'well, I wonder . . .' and the generality of my thoughts had taken a slight, almost imperceptible, shift towards substance.

Something was happening, that much I was certain of. Days passed, they became weeks, then we moved house. With myself in Deptford and Dave in Peckham, a suitable middle-ground became Petitou. I walked here (from Deptford, I kid you not), to find Dave, dressed in yellow, with his bike, which is also yellow. He sits in the front garden complimenting the green foliage.

Petitou's a charm. Set back from the high street, in a surprisingly quaint street. We sit in the garden, by an oak tree. Inside is good-looking. A menu on the wall has the usual list of drinks. Other original goods are on offer, teas and jams and such. I have an above average coffee, served to me by an above average woman. No music as far as I can tell, but a suburban soundtrack of bikes, cars and wind. Hold on, we're upgrading to the pub . . .

NUC: Browns, Brockley

Some say that Browns do the best coffee in London. Dave and I set off at the crack of noon to check this out. It's busier in here than usual. We sit by the window, parallel to the elongated table central to the room where the majority sit. To serve us, the girl has to leave the café, walk down the road about six paces, and come back in the next door. This route avoids the small crowd of customers filling up the space. I feel a pang of guilt as I ask her for milk, sending her back out for another journey. Thankfully, she's very nice, and it's not raining.

I have an Americano; Dave an espresso. Not cheap, £2 for mine. But indeed, it's a good'un. I already sense that I'll be buzzing all day. Best in London? Thus far, on this trip, I concur. We're across from Brockley Station, and Browns has a monitor with the Live Departures. Nice touch, Browns, I'm liking that. Although I have no train to get today, one day, perhaps I'll find that damn useful. Once, I recall, I had a sandwich here which was quite fancy and quite nice.

Brains buzzing with coffee bean-induced enthusiasm, Dave and I get down to sorting out the world and all it's problems. Starting with the Torys . . .

NUC: Ray's Jazz Café

Foyles, the ole bookstore, and it's phantom limb, Ray's Jazz Café. I've been here numerous times. Haven't we all? Chattery, is what it is. Curiously chattery for a place half full with solitary people. And me, solitary amongst my own kind. It's a miniature cultural economy. John Coltrane parps away; people stare into laptops, luminous apples assuring brand credibility; unidentifiable sandwiches arrive beside me with a gent, a Financial Times and a 'do you mind if I . . . '

'Go ahead,' is always the answer. Yet it's never expressed without the misgivings which embed themselves into my tone of voice. Those misgivings, I might add, are not there. Do so please sit there, Sandwich-Wielding Financial Times Man, let us discuss the economy.

But today is not the day for discussions. The wilted economy is a cold dry plank of wood that I am not willing to get walloped by. Even Eddie Mair's soothing tone won't change this, come five o'clock. This day is concerned with matters which would be best described with metaphors about the heart.

I sit with a coffee - Americano, pretty decent, dash of milk, £1.80. One applies milk, sugar, cinnamon (no less) after the initial coffee handover has been completed. Is this to speed up the process? Or does Ray know of the notorious problem of giving somebody too much milk? It's awfully hard to get that milk back out once it's gone in. Either way, if you want milk, get it yourself.

Rustic is the furniture, barren but warm. Long benches have strangers dotted along them - like at a bus stop, only here they're waiting for caffeinated mental stimulation, not busses - an entirely different kind of transport. Foyles café people are like a big family who rarely talk to each other, but when they do, they wonder why they don't do it more often. Some spark arises and two people converse, just like that. It happened to me once and it was very nice. Until that moment, some kind of British stereotype gets embodied in everybody and they stay politely reclusive. But less so here, it must be said. That's one of the charms of this place.

The jazz covers the room with an atmospheric consistency which is hardly noticeable but absolutely necessary. My wooden stirrer sits to one side, in a tiny brown puddle. I sit with Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones and a pink poetry book, soon to be posted off to a person. This person occupies my mind today. I sit amongst those with an eye in a novel and a fork suspended in anticipation, carrying a precarious mouthful; and those having conversations of Waking Life proportions. I feign smiles at people struggling to get past my chair, and read the gruelling synopses of the books I bought.

NUC: Broca, Brockley

A huge blown up photo of the Broca staff hangs on the wall. What larks they have. My CV goes in... Could I be on that wall next season? (No, apparently). Well, there's a few too many kids anyway. But still, it's a tasty place; I like it here. I'm keen on the array of dissimilar furniture, all second hand, mostly quite hard, cushionless. There is a sofa or two, too, if you're so inclined. Pleasant tunes drift through on clouds of caffeine, jangly guitars made for places like this.

People come and go. The Brockley pram society arrive with their new wares, tested with new tiny humans. A room out the back caters for the kids, who spill over into the main bit where I am. Fortunately, I have the patience of a saint. A huge noticeboard serves the community. I saw a very reasonably priced room going for rent, which I forgot to pursue. Such is the nature of the noticeboard. There's a nicely ethical undertone here, ensuring everyone's place in heaven. Organic things coupled with not extortionate prices. If you take a leap over the train station you come across the Broca's sister, the Broca Food Market. Once upon a time I bought dutch waffles from that place. How things change...

TV highlights for 2012

TV promises great things in 2012. These are some highlights that might be worth watching out for....

January - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? - ITV

Reality TV show about some charity workers working with starving Africans. Tensions rise as the crew struggle to get aid in on time, and run into conflict with the local politicians. But politics is a problem on the camp too, as Daryl and Victoria can't decide who should run things. Elsewhere, there's a sparkle of romance for Jenny and a local boy.

February - Panorama: Jurassic Pork - BBC1

Examining the link between developments in the swine flu (H1N1) virus and pigs in blankets leftover at Christmas.

March - Jeremy Clarkson's How About That? - BBC1

More tomfoolery from our favourite blokey bloke as he visits council estates to ask them what they spend their (more like our!) money on.

April onwards- Face Swap - Channel 4

Reality show in which couples see what it's like to have someone else's face surgically transplanted onto the one they love. The first episode sees Jill come home to find that husband Tony now looks like the local newsagent.

April - The Only Made in Swindon - E4

Following the success of the Essex and Chelsea shows, Swindon bands together to prove to the world that they too have dislikable people in their town.

May - Guess Who's Escaped Poverty? - ITV

Follow up documentary about one African family that journeyed across the Mediterranean to Italy, narrowly missing the border police, only to win the Euromillions jackpot on their first attempt. With dramatised re-enactments.

May onwards - Freeloader in an Off-Roader - BBC1

A spin-off of Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car in which people on benefits tackle the newly opened Top Gear mud ring.

June - Dry Planet - BBC1

Attenborough does deserts.

July/August - Olympic Shames - BBC1

New cop show following police and security personnel as they rustle up unsavoury characters at London's Olympics. With terrorists, athlete druggies and the communities of East London, the takings are sure to be high.

August - Newsnight: The Riots, One Year On - BBC2

Theresa May and Diane Abbott argue about whether punitive measures were the right tactic to curtail the rise of the underclass, as the cuts began to bite and more riots threatened.

August onwards - BBC R1OT - New Channel

The BBC invents a special channel alongside the News channel for BBC R1OT, a temporary channel, presumably, as the country once again finds itself gripped by riot fever. Join Jon Sopel for 24 hour coverage on the front line in London, and other reporters dotted around the country in dozens of besieged cities.

September - Natural World - BBC2

With incredible new technology BBC camera-people are on location documenting the rapid spread of mould over an opened yoghurt. Micro-Cameratic Technology (MCT) shows in never-before-seen detail some of the most fundamental procedures of life.

September - Jeremy Clarkson's Mao About That? - BBC1

Clarkson gets special permission to drive to China and explore the pros and cons of a communist, capitalist state.

October - An Arm and a Clegg - Channel 4

Looking back at the first half of Nick Clegg's role as deputy Prime Minister, with leading analysts and commentators addressing the gulf between promises and policies.

October - Occupy This! - Channel 4

One year since tents were pitched outside Saint Paul's, Will Self takes a wry look at where all the camping and shouting has got us. With surveys suggesting that the country hates bankers but hates hippies even more, what chance has the newly established Occupy Party got in the next local elections?

October - Euro: A Tough Act to Follow - BBC4

With the drama finally over, and the countries on the continent resuming their former currencies, Paul Mason asks what's next for the once powerful economic force that is Europe.

November - Maya 2012 - Sky1

Three-part drama series spinning-off from The Mummy franchise following Brendan Fraser as he's accosted by Mayans back from the dead with a stark warning for the fate of humanity. Guest stars Sam Neill.

December - What Will You Do Before We Die? - Channel 4

Audience interactive special presented by Jimmy Carr and Davina McCall charting the nations favourite dying wishes. From massive orgies to a ride in a BMW Q60, nothing is unreasonable when the end is nigh. Contribute online or phone in. 10% of proceeds go to charity.

December 20 - Countdown to Doomsday - BBC1

With David Dimbleby.

(Similar program showing on Sky with Adam Boulton and ITV with Alastair Stewart)

The Filter.

'Eight months of vineyards, swimming, and parties with hippies,' she says. I reply,

- What more could you want?

- Indeed. Well, actually I don't like wine too much. It's OK. I know a bad wine, but can't tell a good one. And hippies . . .

- Hippies.

- The hippie stereotype pales in comparison to the dudes I met.

- An inadequate stereotype?

- I'd say so. The stereotype provides the model, blind enthusiasm does the rest. And despite what they might say, it's not cool.

- Not cool.

- Not cool at all. Regular people wind me up, just think what an exaggerated stereotype does.

- Happy to be home then?

- I'm not home now, I'm away again.

- London's your adopted home.

- I suppose. Yes, happy to be home.

A chocolate sprinkle from her cappuccino, one grain of sawdust chocolate, has found its way to the corner of her mouth. She's looking down at the table, through the table, as if remembering something. Something table-related? I can't be sure. Something from those eight lost months spent with the hippies, swimming? I will never know. Our time apart had not been a time apart, as such. We are not people who could maintain the notion of a distance between us, because we were never together. There is no us. We were an I and a she (from my perspective), in bubbles. In the same city, same room, or merely same language, we had always been apart, unremarkably apart. Our new-found togetherness is strange, as if we are starting again from where things left off, even though nothing ever existed to leave off from. Why were we here? Probably because I asked if she wanted a coffee. People do that in London, right? Meet people who are tragically no more than acquaintances? It's just a sequence of coffees with acquaintances, nothing more. That's what we're doing. It's so banal and yet so breathtakingly significant.

And I say,

- I suppose God gave us a filter so that people don't say things like this but, you were my favourite.

The guy reading The Guardian twitches. He must be crying with laughter inside. Pity me, friend, or jump in and save me. I'm doing that thing that we always regret not doing - seizing, leaping, falling. And why do we not do it? Because it's awful. It feels awful; it sounds awful. No collection of words can get around the glaring ridiculousness of this very moment. No sequence of words can arise like a magical formula to make it better. It's like choosing between a handgun, shotgun or cannon: if you're standing in the wrong place, you're going down.

She peers though the table some more. Lips parted. A tiny smile . . . is this a smile? Perhaps. But her cheeks have something of a smile-adorning quality; she is always somewhat smiling.

- Do you believe in God?

Her eye on mine now. not staring. A soft eye. Not darting between left eye and right eye like people do when they're incredibly intrigued by what you're saying. Just her eyes, doing their thing. If her gaze were a car, it would be going at about twenty.

- No (I say this without much of the conviction I'd hoped to express.)

- So where does the filter come from?

- I don't know. Where does life come from?

- Don't get too profound on me now, explain the filter.

- My filter's evidently faulty.

- That doesn't bode well for the credibility of the things you say.

- Thanks.

- Who knows what might come out. (She tilts her head slightly.)

- I realise the danger.

- Maybe that's enough to disprove God.

- People ignoring the filter?

- People sensing the filter and then blasting straight though it.

- You're not going to let me get away with this are you.

- But God gave you free will, huh?

- Worst mistake he ever made.

- So is it you or God that filters your words?

- What do you think?

- It's not God.

- I think, therefore there is a God?

- That's a circle.

- I say the wrong things, therefore i am?

- That's stupid.

- Lacan?

- That's a God complex.

- Society?

- No such thing.

- Socially acceptable labour time?

- Completely irrelevant.

- Historical materialism?

- You can take your syllables some place else.

- My syllables will be my undoing.

She paused, then said,

- Once when I escaped the hippies and walked out to the vineyard near my cousin's, I managed to convince myself that I was in Italy. Have you been to Italy? Me neither. But I'm sure it was just like Italy. Rows of grapes, all parallel snaking across the hills, paths occasionally splitting them up. The sun was setting and I sat there long enough for the shadow, cast by a wooden trailer, to run from the path I had come from, past the tree where I was sat, narrowly missing my legs, to the barn where my Aunt was making dinner. Pizza of course.

- Of course.

- I became totally convinced that it was Italy: the Mafia were circling the town demanding protection money; Salvatore the fugitive is hiding in the hills, waiting for revenge; the young boys were trying to enlist in the army (it's the olden days and there's a war on). And my sister, who is older and luckier than I am, is fretting because she hasn't heard from Alfonso -

- Alfonso?

- Alfonso - in over a week. He's only twenty, the same as my sister. He rushed off with his machine gun with such excitement. At the end of the first week she received seven letters, all at once. He had written every day, but the post was only delivering once a week around these parts, where only the wine and Mafia operated. The second week she received five letters. Apparently Alfonso was in the trenches, in the cold mountainous regions at the French border. After a month the postman came with nothing but rations for the family, and my sister is heartbroken. She's been crying into his clothes for three days. She's stopped eating pizza. But spring has come to Italy and it's one of those curiously over-hot spring days that reminds you how drastically the heights of the seasons differ, and I'm sitting watching the trailer's shadow, waiting for pizza, thinking of my sister and the whereabouts of her quiet boyfriend. I wonder if someday I will have a boyfriend who I can cry over, who can nearly destroy me with his lack of presence, or uncertainty of life. Whether he will break my heart by finding something special in another girl which for some reason isn't in me, and I can commit myself to finding out what that thing is, mimicking it and winning him back. Because, for me, Italy is beautiful and empty. The shadow would sweep along the track, narrowly missing my leg, and depart as the day cooled.

The small grain of chocolate is still at the corner of her mouth. I almost use this moment to draw her attention to it, but refrain from doing so.

Some people are advocates of the working filter. Some people are not. Some encourage a rupture and then are appalled at the result. Some mirror it with a simultaneous breakdown in their own filter mechanism. Some laugh. Some change the subject. Some embrace the subject. Some are lost for words. Some forget that words need not mean anything. Some forget that words can mean something. Some talk of wine, war, and pizza, and dedicate their afternoon to keeping you wondering. I suppose that's why God gave us cappuccinos.