Categories
Coffee review Coffee Roasters Observations Science history slow Sustainability/environmental

A Story with many layers, Clapham Junction

Story Coffee St John's Hill Clapham
The doorway to Story, or a story depending on how you look at it.

A “ghost sign” above the door to Story Coffee on St John’s Hill ensures that you know that you have arrived at the correct place. “Peterkin Custard, Self-Raising Flour – Corn Flour, can be obtained here”, only now it is coffee rather than custard that is sold in the shop beneath. The sign is an indicator to the many tales that could be discerned while exploring the coffee within. I had had a couple of attempts to visit Story Coffee (thwarted for a variety of reasons) before Brian’s Coffee Spot’s review appeared a couple of days after one of my attempted visits. Suitably re-motivated, another trip was attempted (address checked, closing times checked) and this time we were in luck. Although a pour over is listed on the menu, sadly this was not available on our visit and so I enjoyed a lovely long black instead (Red Brick, Square Mile) while looking at the cakes on offer. There was plenty of seating in which to shelter from the rain outside and many things to notice in this friendly café. In addition to the cakes and lunch menu, a box on the counter housed “eat grub” protein bars, protein bars made of cricket powder. Are insects the future for humans to eat protein sustainably?

glass jar at Story
Through a glass darkly?
The distortions produced by the refractive indices of air, water and glass and the shape of the glass produces interesting effects on our view through it.

The tables were well arranged for people to sit chatting while enjoying their beverages and it is always an excellent thing (from a personal point of view) to encounter a café with a no laptop (or tablet) at the tables policy. Complementary tap water was available in jugs placed on each table while it was also nice to note that Story branded re-usable cups were on sale from the counter. Many things we noted can be seen in the gallery pictures in the review on Brian’s Coffee Spot: the funky fans, the egg shaped light shades, the light introduced by the large glass window panes (though it was a much fairer day on Brian’s visit than on ours). Each had its contribution to a thought train, the way the glass water jar bent the light coming through, the concept of a Prandtl boundary layer in fluids (and its connection to both fans and coffee cups). Moreover there were hexagons, which for someone who has worked on the periphery of the graphene craze, are always thought provoking.

Apart from hexagons decorating the top of the stools, there were hexagons lining the counter made of cut logs, each showing the rings from the tree that was felled. Rather than a flat surface, these hexagons were made to be different thicknesses on the wall, rather like the hexagonal columns of the Giant’s Causeway. It is a subtle thing that may have implications for the space that is otherwise surrounded by flat, solid, walls. Such spaces can become echo-y and yet, the music and conversation in Story was not overly distracting presumably because features such as the uneven hexagonal wall reflected the sound waves such that they destructively interfered rather than echoed around the room.

every tree tells a story, but which story
A macroscopic crystal of hexagonally cut logs forms the side of the counter.

Each log in the hexagonal decoration was cut with its cross-section showing a number of tree rings. We know that we can age a tree by counting the rings (though each of these would be underestimated as they have been trimmed into hexagons post-drying), but what more do the tree rings, and the trees themselves have to tell us? The rings are caused by the rapid growth of large cells during spring followed by a slower growth of smaller cells as the year progresses. But this method of growth means that the cut logs have more to tell us than just their age. The spacing between the rings can tell of the weather the tree experienced during that year, were there many years of drought for example? Such clues, from the relative density of the tree rings, can help researchers learn about the climate in previous centuries, but conversely, reading the climate report in the rings can indicate in which year a tree was felled and so the age of a building for example.

coffee at Story
Many stories start with a coffee.

And then there is more, trees will grow at an average rate per year so that, as a rough guide, the circumference of a mature (but not old) tree increases by 2.5cm per year¹. There is therefore something in the idea that you can have a good guess at how old a tree is by hugging it. But this assumes that the tree is growing in its optimum conditions, far enough from any neighbouring trees so as not to be crowded into growing more slowly. So the absolute density of tree rings must also give a clue as to whether this tree was in a dense forest or an open clearing. Which is reminiscent of something else that living trees can tell you if you listen to them closely enough: trees will grow so that their leaves are exposed to the maximum amount of light. For us in the UK, this means that the crown of a tree will frequently tip towards the south (where the Sun is most often) and there will be more leaf growth (and consequently more branches) in a southerly direction². But again, we only see this if the tree has room to grow on its own, without the crowding, and competition, of too many neighbours. A solitary tree helps us to know which direction we are walking in.

empty coffee cup Story St John's Hill
While many coffees could also tell a story. It depends on how you read them.

Which all points to the idea that there are many stories being told all around us all of the time, the ones we hear depend on what we choose to pay attention to. So what about the story behind the ghost sign above the door? The Peterkin custard company was a venture by J. Arthur Rank in an attempt to start a milling company in the mould of his father’s (Rank Hovis McDougall, later bought by Premier Foods). The company failed and Rank went on to form the Rank Organisation that was responsible for many films made throughout the 40s and 50s as well as running a chain of cinemas around the UK. Truly a sign concealing many stories.

 

Story Coffee is at 115 St John’s Hill, SW11 1SZ

¹Collins complete guide to British Trees, Collins, 2007

²The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs, Tristan Gooley, Hodder and Stoughton, 2014

 

 

 

 

Categories
Allergy friendly Coffee review Observations Science history slow Tea

Creating an impression at 2Love Coffee House, Clapham Junction

coffee, cake menu, Clapham Junction, monmouth coffee
The menu at 2Love in Clapham Junction and some of the coffee making equipment in the window.

There is a lot of coffee paraphernalia on display in the windows at 2Love Coffee House on St John’s Road near Clapham Junction. Reusable cups, filters, moka pots, Chemex’s etc. Stepping inside, a piano greets you while the counter is on the left. The wall behind the counter is lined with jars of different sorts of tea while the coffee menu is on a blackboard close to the window. Coffee is roasted by Monmouth and is also available to purchase for brewing at home. Moreover, the number of re-usable cups on display meant that I have to admit to a touch of reusable cup envy when I saw the variety of glass cups on sale, have I used my cup enough to justify a second*? One great feature about this café was the care that they have taken to specify the allergens in their cakes on the blackboard, it is a considerate touch for people with allergies. Although we didn’t enjoy a cake on this occasion, it is great to know that I can!

There is definitely a musical feel to the café, with statues of musicians on shelves around the shop and pictures of different singers on each of the walls. Although we managed to find a table, it was rather crowded with the amount of chatter and distractions in the café initially challenging my assumption that all cafés can offer a space to contemplate and consider connections. However, this brief doubt in the idea behind Bean Thinking did not last long. The change in direction started with our discussion over an Americano and a fruit juice: can there be a justification for not eating certain meats if you are not already vegetarian/vegan and if so, what is it? This didn’t seem to go down too well with the table adjacent to us. On the wall behind our table was a metal picture of a horse drawn cart where the figures had been raised out of the picture to form a 3D image. It was reminiscent of the patterns given for stone rubbing as a child. But it was also reminiscent of something else, something that shines a light on an area of manufacturing as well as, perhaps, our conversation about the ethics of meat eating.

Not quite a mirror at 2 Love
3D Metal picture, musician statue and poster at 2Love Coffee House, who is the fairest of them all?

It concerns Chinese (or Japanese) magic mirrors. Known about for millennia (and not just in China, Aulus Gellius (c125 – approx 180 AD) wrote of them in the second century¹), they are slightly convex mirrors made of bronze. One surface appears to be an ordinary mirror but on the reverse surface, images of mythology or special Chinese characters are cast in relief. A Nature paper of 1879 describes why they were considered ‘magical’:

“If a polished surface is looked at directly, it acts as an ordinary mirror, reflecting the objects in front of it, but giving, of course, no indication whatever of the raised patterns on the back; if however a bright light be reflected by the smooth face of the mirror onto a screen, there is seen on this screen an image formed of bright lines on a dark background more or less perfectly representing the pattern on the back of the mirror, which is altogether hidden from the light”.¹

You can see photos of such mirrors and their reflections here but how would such an image be produced? Apart from magic, the first explanations for the effect focussed on it being trickery on the part of the makers of these mirrors. Perhaps the image was patterned onto the front of the mirror using more dense (or less dense) material, covered with a thin layer of lead or tin and highly polished so that you would never notice it by looking at your reflection only by shining light at it? Maybe there was other trickery involved on the part of the mirror makers to deceive us into thinking we could see through the mirror to the back. Later researchers wondered if these mirrors really existed at all as few could be found when they searched for them amongst Japanese mirror workshops. And yet a few mirrors with this magic quality were found and subject to study in the late nineteenth century.

window display 2Love
How much is that cup in the window?
Some of the reusable cups on sale at 2Love coffee house.

The results showed that the image was not formed if projected too close to the mirror but only if the screen were held some distance away from the mirror’s surface. Moreover careful optical experiments showed that the image was formed by the surface of the mirror having thicker regions that were less convex than the rest of the mirror so that these reflected the light differently². Although the image at the back of the mirror had been cast and not stamped on the back, the stresses and strains formed by the pattern on the metal somehow propagated through the (thin) mirrors and produced distortions on the surface of the mirror. Even when highly polished, these minute distortions in curvature remained causing the reflection of the ‘magic’ image under certain lighting conditions.

The theory describing the optics behind the magic mirrors was described as a ‘beautiful fact’ in a fairly recent mathematical description. But exactly how the stress of the pattern at the back gets transferred to the surface of the mirror remains to be understood³. Nonetheless, the fact that imperfections on one side of a material can be revealed by the projected reflections from the surface of the other, a process known as “Makyoh imaging”, is now used to check the integrity of semiconductor wafers before they are used in the manufacturing of devices. A piece of physics based neither on magic, nor on trickery, that is useful for our computer based lifestyles.

When faced with something that seemed improbable, it is interesting that our first explanations were based on magic, deceit on the part of the one who made it or distrust of the phenomenon altogether. It was only by carefully studying something that was too easily dismissed that the beautiful physics and industrial relevance of the property was revealed. For me this has pertinence to the question of our own investigation into what we think about the world. Do we place too much weight in our judgement of what we do not understand merely based on our own experience of how things are? Do we need to look more carefully at what we thought we knew? Great pondering points for a visit to a café and confirmation that, provided you have good coffee and a nice chair to sit on, contemplation directions can be found no matter how popular the venue.

2Love coffee is at 89 St John’s Road, Clapham Junction, SW11 1QY

¹ “The Mirror of Japan and its Magic Quality” Nature, April 10 1879, p 559

² “The Magic Mirror of Japan, Part 1”, WE Ayrton and John Perry, Proc. Royal. Soc, 28, 127 (1878-79)

³ “Oriental Magic Mirrors and the Laplacian Image”, MV Berry, Euro. J. Phys. 27, 109 (2006)

*Although there are differences depending on what you take into account, lifecycle analysis done here, here and here suggest a break-even point of disposable to reusable cups from 15 to 100 re-uses. However, if you consider that part of the solution to our environmental problems involves breaking the consumerist mindset then perhaps, if it ain’t broke, no need to replace it.