St Michael’s Church Cafe

You don’t have to be Christian to enjoy a nice cup of tea here. You don’t have to be religious at all. Although, it is a bit ‘Jam & Jerusalem’ for some people’s liking, rather like a WI meeting with cakes and sympathy — and jolly middle-​aged ladies doting on you (rather lovely actually).
They run bazaars and craft fayres on a regular basis
There are quite a few tables, each covered in plastic table cloths, so far, so naff. But the food was a revelation (excuse the biblical pun, unintentional I can assure you). Just 50 sweet pence for a tasty mug of fairtrade coffee and biscuit. £1.20 for beans on toast and homemade scones and jam, cakes and flapjacks for less than a quid a slice. Mmm. The big old church is warm enough inside and the whole experience feels better for the community than frequenting your local Starbucks (although probably not as ‘cool’).

St Michael’s Church has a nice little café that I stumbled upon today when I was looking for the crafts fair (on the first Saturday of every month but not this month because of Christmas apparently). I was poking my head around various doors in vain, when a very jolly middle-​aged lady obviously decided that I looked like a good candidate for being helpful to. Afterwards, I was left with a sense of acute embarrassment (why should we be embarrassed when a stranger decides to help us?), and an odd feeling of longing for a place where everyone was that nice. (And I do mean nice… in that almost brittle way that people who spend their time trying to be nice to strangers tend to become.) Then I saw my chance to enter her world — the coffee shop.
There were seven four-​seater tables with blue and white chequered plastic cloth covering them. People looked at me and said hello. It was very strange. The menu was a very nice surprise — 50p for a mug of coffee and a biscuit! £1.20 for beans on toast! Despite the lovely wholesome community atmosphere, and the feeling that the people around me would have fallen over themselves to be nice to me given any opportunity, I think I will come here again.