Our wives named us the “Saturday Morning Sad Bastards”, and our haunts are called, generically, “The Sad Café”. “Grumpy Old Men” works, too, as we are a cluster of friends whose origins date back to 1974, so longevity is the cement that keeps us together. That, and wristwatches.
We came together through a series of coincidences, our mutual interests somehow creating a force: we all love cars, hi-fi equipment, cameras, fountain pens and any other boys’ toys that happen to cause a flicker of curiosity. But rather than butcher, baker, candlestick maker, we are plumber, watchmaker, electronics wizard, newspaper designer and hack. And we love to put the world to rights every Saturday morning, meeting in whatever coffee shop will put up with us in East Kent. We’re on our fifth or sixth, having been thrown out of a few.