Not to be confused with its posher, more famous namesake further down the river (which I have never had much interest in visiting), The River Cafe is a friendly local caff with a wonderful tiled interior and cheap food. I wasn't hungry enough for a proper meal, but a nicely stodgy croissant and a mug of tea (no milk, one piece of lemon) came to a bargainous £1.80 ­­­­– cheaper than many places charge just for the tea, these days.

You'd be hard-pushed not to love this place, with its ageless formica and tiled walls, and it was certainly doing a roaring trade, even though I'd arrived in the middle of the afternoon, long after the lunch crowd should have left. (although this photo doesn't show the full crowd as lots of people had left by the time I took it)

There are a few more photos here, and more reports on EBCB, Great British Cafes, the Breakfast Blog, and Edwin Heathcote's article at the FT comes with a great slideshow. (Heathcote's book London Caffs has been a favourite in our house since it came out, and is one of the things that prompted me to go to the River Cafe in the first place a few years ago. Worth picking up, even though quite a lot of the cafes in it have closed down now — more reason to visit ones like the River Cafe or Rodi's while they're still around to visit.)

It's a great place, full of character, and full of characters. While we were queuing up the entire cafe was being regaled by a jolly woman about her very busy life, and the two women behind the counter had more than a few comments to share.

The best thing about the place, besides it apparently being a great place to people-watch, is the original vintage decor. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos in the front of the cafe because I didn't want to intrude on people having lunch, but there are two other rooms. One is a converted passageway, with beautiful green tiles and a red-and-black checkerboard floor.

The other is a slightly grander dining room, looking more like a traditional pie-and-mash shop (although I didn't notice pie-and-mash on the menu). There's also a little smoking area out the back, which I didn't explore.

As well as the beautiful green tiles, there are other great period details, like this old ad for Nosegay Tobacco (no snerking at the back!), which is found in the window of a phonebox. Yes, a phonebox. No phone that I noticed, though.

Then there is this beautiful illuminated advert for 7-up, which is impossible to resist. It's slightly different on both sides:

viewed from outside

viewed from inside

As for the food, my ham omelette was standard caff fare, although not unnecessarily greasy, and the chips were very good; crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. When I ordered my cappuccino (with slight dread as caffs often fail to provide good coffee), I was asked if I wanted a strong one, and it was perfect: it tasted almost like proper Italian cappuccino. And the staff were so friendly, I instantly felt at home. The only drawback is that it's only open on weekdays, so you can't go there for a weekend fry-up, but if you fancy bunking off during the week, it's well worth the journey to the end of the Victoria line.

I've been collecting a mental list of cafes in London that I'd like to visit before they disappear, as so many of them seem to do, but I haven't really managed to collate them into one easy-to-find place. At the Comics Reunited thing last Saturday, I was chatting to a couple of people about our favourite cafes and how so many of them are closing down, and one of them suggestions that we should make a communal effort to visit them as a group. This has prompted me to get my act together and collect them here in one place, under one tag, so that whenever I find a new place I can add it to the list and see them all in one place.

Hence: Project Formica. When you start to see lots of caff-related links showing up via del.icio.us, that's the reason why. If you have any that you recommend, please do tell me about them, too!

Bon appetit, as they say.

In terms of enjoyment of the con, it probably didn't help that I missed all of the panels I had any interest in attending, due to travel and seeing friends. Seeing those people was actually the highlight of my weekend, so I didn't really mind missing the panels, but it did mean that paying £16 for a weekend pass was a steep price to pay just to go into a couple of rooms and look at some comics on some tables (especially as one of the BICS organisers told me I could have got a free pass if he'd known I was going — not that he reimbursed me, mind you). It was also the first time that I've ever come home without having bought a single comic at all. There was nothing which screamed that I must buy it right now, and that was pretty disappointing. Maybe I've just got higher standards than I used to have — in some ways, I'd like to think so, given that I've been to about 25 comics conventions in the last eight years, and have bought an awful lot of dross in that time. That's a more cheery thought than the notion that comics are all shit right now — and I really don't think that's true! Eesh, I hope not, anyway.

My highlight of the weekend was nothing to do with BICS or comics at all. I always like going to these events to see the people, anyway, and it was fantastic to catch up with friends I hadn't seen for ages. I hadn't seen Pete for about a year, and it was even longer since I'd seen Olulabelle and Mix, and it was lovely to meet their two boys for the first time, as well.

We had brunch at the Kitchen Garden Cafe (the food took a bloody long time to reach us, but it was yummy, and they did knock half the items off the bill to make up for the slow service), and then we went to look at piles of rice in an old warehouse in the jewellery district.

That was actually way more interesting than it sounds, and not just because Birmingham's jewellery district is a really interesting place historically and visually. The piles of rice formed an exhibition called Of All The People In All The World, aka thericeshow. You might not think that seeing piles of rice would be interesting, but each pile represented a fascinating statistic, many of which challenged our preconceptions and prejudices in a way that really got us thinking and talking. Some of them were very poignant, some filled me with disgust, some were admirable, and some were just plain silly. We were encouraged to take photos, so you can see some of the more interesting statistics in this photoset.

One in particular made us laugh, the one about John William Gott being the last man in the UK to be jailed for blasphemy after comparing Jesus to a clown. Not that this is intrinsically funny in itself (although it is ironic that his surname means "god" in German — God thought Jesus was a clown!), but because earlier, outside the warehouse, we'd spotted a figure stencilled on a wall, with a face on its chest, and we couldn't work out if the face was supposed to be Jesus or Charles Manson (which is quite a difference, I think you'll agree!). Maybe Charles Manson was really just a stand-up comic. He's certainly as self-obsessed as most stand-up comedians.

The exhibition is worth checking out if you get a chance. It's moving to Barcelona, and then continues to tour the world, so it might show up in your hometown eventually.