Curators Coffee Studio

Leadenhall Market, City of London

“Many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple.”

Moby-Dick, Chapter 33: The Specksnyder

Steel skies squat on Leadenhall Market’s triumphal arches. Rain spatters and drums on the exposed hypocaust of the Lloyd’s building, its chrome pipework heating the hunched number crunchers of our most imperious capital. Over shop doors, barbarian brand names are forced into a neat red and gold conformity of style and typeface.

The uniform tramp of leather soles on cobbles drags me out of a reverie. A phalanx of bankers is bearing down on me, umbrellas aloft in a defensive tortuga around their leader in his Italian tailored pomp. I scatter in disarray. From all over the world they come, these financial foot soldiers, to adopt this dress and to be spoken through by the purpled language of money.

Just outside the leaden palisade, Curators Coffee Studio is a riot of multicoloured rebellion. Of tattoos and knitwear and mind-altering drinks. Smiling faces peer through a screen of densely potted vegetation. I want to cheer. To paint my face with woad. To run through the arches, out of the pale, and roar the name Caractacus.