The new normal

I was wandering around Paddington wondering when life would return to normal. COVID, rain, Warney, Ukraine … weird times, where life simply wasn’t normal.

During a break in the weather we headed up to Oxford St with every other dog owner in Paddington with our French Bulldog/Jack Russell cross.

Dog owners know that during rainy times you have to stay close to the protection of the Oxford St shop awnings in case the sky dumps again; the middle of Centennial Park is not the place to be when the dark clouds suddenly emerge from Bondi, or the city, or from the south or north.

As we strolled, it wasn’t raining so we bravely ventured out into the open past the Paddo RSL toward the city when my wife said to turn right and go down to a café. We turn right into Young St and I say: “What café?” She says: “This one.”

I know the place, but know it as a ‘hole-in-the-wall’. I’d never had a coffee from there. “Are we grabbing a takeaway,” I say. “No,” she replies. “It’s a café and we can sit in and take the dog.” Really?

So we go in, and there it is just inside the door. The quintessential Paddo haunt you never knew existed. Or, thought it was something it wasn’t. My ‘hole-in-the-wall’ was actually Funkis Kokët Café, which provided both intimate privacy and the atmosphere of a humming café you could easily visit every day.

It is one of the many, and I mean many, nooks and crannies my wife found during lockdown as she strolled the streets with the dog and kids for the want of anything better to do and to kill the tedium of 5km radiuses and another midweek day of mind-numbing child and dog-care while a relieved husband was at work.

The garden part of the café may have been closed during lockdown, but its existence was found nonetheless. As I sat there waiting for our coffees and pastry, I thought to myself, “We’re back.”

It felt good. Almost all tables were full, the sun was teasing us, no one had a mask on, and in that moment in time I truly believed we had turned a corner.

That’s the magic of Paddington. Despite living here for 13 years and nearby for the previous 7, there is still an unimaginable amount of places to find, and revive you, just around the corner from where you have rested your head for more than a decade.