"I think I deserve a long holiday"

Because of the cafe book and blog I get a lot of emails, journalists etc wanting me to comment on or decry the closure of a cafe by rapacious landlords. This, from London Centric, is almost always the story of what's really happened."We do a lot of reporting at London Centric on small businesses struggling to cope with the city’s rising rents, rapid transformation, or greedy landlords.Whether the threat is posed by developers or gentrification, we’ve found that the stories about the closure of beloved institutions can be more complicated than they first appear. Case in point: Madeira Star in south London’s Kennington, a Portuguese cafe that’s been open for 30 years.We were alerted to its closure by an online petition to save the cafe, which said the “much-loved establishment” was being “displaced” by the landlord’s decision not to renew the lease. The petition called on Lambeth Council to grant the cafe community asset status and demanded that “consideration for the people and the…