I was passing this when I saw the chalkboard sign “The best coffee in London”. There was no mention about who had bestowed this accolade – possibly the owner – but it certainly made me curious.

Noo Noo and Bebo’s (Even though I double checked, I’m sure I’ve got the name wrong) is a tiny café, about the size of a big school store cupboard. At one stage there were about eight people in there, some ordering, others just chatting or listening to the French rap music that was playing on the speakers.

For my sandwich I was asked “white or brown bread, love?” I asked for brown and so, a short while later, a neat little white bread bacon sarnie appeared. The brown sauce was a bit sweet – Daddy’s rather than HP perhaps – and the bacon was a little stiff and not quite fatty enough.

But the coffee really was very good. I had a latte with an extra shot. This is my current crush as I try to wean myself off Americanos. Admittedly latte with an extra shot is the alcopop of the caffeine world but Americanos after lunch give me a headache as well as flashbacks to a rugby tour to Paris in the mid 1980s. But this lovely little latte – which was like a kind and gentle, hair strokey version of an espresso - reminded me of sitting in an apartment in Mamers, France with my pen friend and his cousin, staring at flowered wallpaper and discussing the works of Laurent Voulzy.

Afterwards I walked up Highgate Road to pick my daughter up from school. On the way I passed The HMV Forum (formerly the Town and Country Club) which I last went to in 1991 to see a Throwing Muses gig. Even though I’ve been in London for over twenty years I’ve never walked the stretch from The Forum up to the railway bridge (which I’ve previously approached from the north). Another little piece of London is now joined up in my mind.