This painting may appear at first glance to depict an intimate atmosphere with a cosy and welcoming feel, yet the characters have a distance between them. This reflects some of my own experiences: on many occasions I have entered cafes like this one in the capital city where I live (London), expecting to feel welcome and noticed, but most of the time people mind their own business and so I have ended up leaving the place alone, as I came in, but with a feeling of discomfort. In the painting, the tables between the customers are set apart from each other and there is no attempt to communicate with each other, which really emphasises the notion of keeping one’s distance, so for me this reflects the current period that we are living in: with social distance as the new norm, it will only exacerbate this form of behaviour among the public in ‘intimate’ spaces.