Hand made food

If there is a place in the UK with a greater density of pretentious cafes than Blackheath village, I'd like to know about it. There's even one called Hand Made Food for Pete's sake!

I remember TC telling me how her enterprising compatriots in Brazil have really taken to the latest labelling scams, offloading onto our brand-addled middle classes products like 'organic' dulce de leche which was anyway produced without all the pesticides (i.e. cheaply) before this collective consumer fantasy of escape from the processed life became so pervasive.

The most depressing thing about the people that frequent these worthy places is the way they sit as couples or small family groups ignoring each other (and more especially ignoring their children if they happen to have any) as they read the Sunday papers and sip their Fairtrade coffee.

And then there's the fact that they are actually making things worse, intensifying a newer form of process that compensates for its essential shallowness by the way it makes people feel socially and morally superior just for having participated in it.