Madeleine

On a bright crisp morning, Madeleine’s is an invigorating place to have a meeting. I sat with my laptop, Skype, en plein air in front of the common. I didn’t get much done though.
Whilst I sat to regard joggers absorbing the shock of the pavement in their knees as they coursed around the park’s pathways in view of the shopfront, I dipped in an almost perfect, almond perfumed biscuit-​like friand into a china cup-​full of rose petal tea, the biscuit doing the absorbing, in my lovely cup of splosh.
During my ‘meeting’, I tried to soak up as much information from my colleague on the phone as possible. Blueprint this, deadline that, in between details of office gossip to suggest she’d had a rather unmentionably enjoyable weekend with a work crush. However, whilst my concentration tried to make sense of a spreadsheet, my gaze was drawn to analysing the rows of beautifully presented teas on the counter inside to choose from and fresh plates of the shop’s namesake cake freshly laid out.
I’d ordered and finished my second cup of pleasantly lifting verbena, whilst my colleague happily trilled on, coming to the conclusion of her call, but due to my lack of attention I panicked. I was none the wiser to what was I tasked with.
I made my excuses about my ‘signal’ for not following her story and tried to tune in, but then I was again, struck by bakery FOMO, distracted by the pattern of glazed pecans deeply sunken into custard beds of crumbly tarts; having been under a warm oven, contents had risen to prop their custardy innards almost over the edge of sweet crust.
I moved inside to enjoy a refill of hot water on my tea leaves and to tuck in to the firmly unctuously tart. It really is rather handsomely decorated in Madeleine’s and was caught for another few minutes, gazing at the heavenly scene of the ceiling.
I was being devil may care with a deadline due, yet I thought what the heck. Let me eat cake.
This place is a sensory overload of delicious baking smells, I made my excuses to my colleague to say my ‘signal’ was playing up again and promised myself I’d work from home and call her back ‘Toot (h) Sweet’, I just had to grab a bag of Madeleine’s to go first, to get me through the afternoon. Be rude not to.