Rolf. (rscamander) wrote in changedrpg, @ 2011-07-21 20:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !date: 1997 - july, john dawlish, rolf scamander |
Who: Rolf Scamander; John Dawlish
When: Thursday
Where: A cafe on Bloomsbury Way
What: Discussing the potential of becoming flatmates
Rating: Low
Open/Closed: Closed
Rolf Scamander liked it here. That isn't to say that he didn't dislike other cafes or that there was something particular about this one that made it stand out as being special or different, he simply liked it. There was something charming about the little round tables with crisp, crocheted doilies and plain china plates that he found charming. There was something about the positioning of the uncluttered paintings on the wall atop preposterously patterned wallpaper that made him happy. There was something about the older woman behind the counter who'd called him 'Lovie' and the temperature of the cup of tea that, to Rolf, was all very British. It had that kind of xenophilic quaintness to it that made him feel (not unpleasantly) like an outsider.
In fact, one might argue that Rolf actually liked being an outsider. He liked observing and comparing other people and what they did in the day-to-day that was simply something he could not do in his hometown. It's so very easy to ignore what it always the same, and almost impossible to do so with something that is different, and London was so very, very different.
It occurred to him, as he sat sipping his Earl Grey with lemon and wondering who the British had gotten on for so long without a steady supply of coffee to their veins, that he did not know what Mr. John Dawlish looked like. He knew what he did, what he wanted, and that he thought Wagner was fine, but none of that was of any importance when he had to meet John Dawlish in a cafe.
Scamander decided to make a game of it. He would look very carefully at every young man who walked in that could be John Dawlish and try to guess if it was, in fact, the man with the flatshare or if it was someone else. He didn't know how good he would be at this kind of game. He could pick out the differences between similar birds in less time than it took a British Headmaster to bring the cane down across a wicked boy's backside, but he was not quite as confident that he could identify a British-Ministry-Worker-Meeting-A-Flatma