Spark Cafe, Clapton

Spark Cafe
Springfield Park Cafe
Springfield Park
Clapton
E5 9EF
www.sparkcafe.co.uk

by Malcolm Eggs

With thanks to the estate of Eggar Alpen Poe

During half of a bright, sunny and soundless hour in the spring of the year, I had been passing with three others, on foot, through a singularly inky tract of Clapton, and we found ourselves within view of the legendary Springfield Park Cafe. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of being very peckish indeed pervaded my spirit. I looked upon the scene before me - upon the welcoming café, and the wild features of the park - upon the friendly pigeons - upon the daft little yapping dog - and upon the big marshy whatnot in the distance; I looked upon it all with a great hopefulness of belly that I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than the yearning of a pious alcoholic barbiturates addict, at the very last minute of Lent.

The breakfast was superb. It was not its diameter nor its radius - but its height - ah, that was appealing! A generousness of bacon; an egg large, tasty and summery beyond comparison; two sausages of an addictive herby model, with a breadth of flavour unusual in similar constructions; a hash brown, speaking in its sturdy reliability of an abundance of moral energy; beans alternately vivacious and sullen.

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of parkland whose vegetation, so varied in hue, impressed on my mind at once the urgency with which I should communicate this glorious place to all who would listen, so they could verify my account while the summer still persisted. And I know not how it was but as I left I took a moment to blink and it was autumn, and then it was winter, then it was spring, before I was blinking into the summer once more.

They still do a nice breakfast though, I’m told.