Cafe Kino Venn hub

After my radio show on Friday morning, I went to Café Kino with Shereene. I probably ordered a raspberry lemonade- that tends to be my tipple of choice there. The breakfast bar stools were full so we took a couple in front of the fireplace and chatted about the show. Around us various other Venners were munching and quaffing and gassing. Kino had become a hub, a place where the vibrations of the festival brought us all together to exchange, share and inform before shaking us apart again, dispersing us amongst various gigs. Kino was a place we were contained and became if not a solid mass then at least a liquid. As well as being an important communications intersection, Kino vastly improved the diets of many Venn workers- the delicious food stoked our engines and prepared us for the next leg of our various journeys while we let off steam.

I have been waiting for Kino for years. I have always needed a café where I can write, think, feel unhurried and generally treat like a room in my own home. A couple of establishments have approached this but never fully arrived. Kino is the place. The first time I walked in there I knew. For one thing, people I like and trust run the joint. It’s important to trust the people who are preparing your food and drink and I don’t just mean from a Food Hygiene Certificate point of view. I want to trust the choice of ingredients, the preparation, the whole life of the meal from ground to gut. And with Kino I do. They make proper happy food, infusing joy to eating. And yet it isn’t just the food that makes the place. The coffee is cheap which is like an open invitation and because you don’t feel as if you are buying your time and seat there it’s a prime place to hang out. I’m bound to see people to chat with or I can chose to hide away in the basement which is light and spacious but snug too. In fact I like the place so much I get nervous for it. I don’t want to think about it not being there. I don’t even like writing that sentence down. Forget I ever did.