Trolls,elves, dogs and Gypsies in the last days of the Grotto

This week, as the closure is approaching, at the cafe there was a decadent, "fin de règne" atmosphere. All the elves, trolls, bards, gypsies, and bees were more active than ever. The other day as I drove by I saw some of my fellow gypsies wearing all sorts of things around their neck, from Hawaian flowers to Tibetan prayer flags, glassbeads, etc. it was a hilarious vision.

Our resident dogs, Lucy and Buddy, are often being babysitted, as the matron of the cafe is getting busy packing her stuff, because she's moving to an even more remote area than ours, "Moses Lake". Now wait a minute. Moses lake. Think about it. Sounds like the title of a peplum movie or the destination of a pilgrimage. Maybe a miracle will occur there, which would turn our matron into... a saint? Gretcheeeeeeen! Don't go there, they'll make you go to church! and who knows, walk on water!!! - Imagine? We'd then have to prostrate ourselves in front of her? Disgusting. The sad thing is that since Lucy is less present, Luke, the now semi resident dog, babysitted by Michael, is getting neurasthenic. The only dog that doesn't seem to be affected by all this remue-menage, and who remains as active as ever, is Tug, but that doesn't count, as I suspect his chauffeur feeds him alkaline batteries.

Even the hours were not respected any more: the cafe would close earlier, or close then reopen, and treats come about any time of day. Suddenly you had no excuse not to spend most of your time at the cafe, like at the eve of the world's end, everybody seems to make the best of it, and all the rest can wait. Political discussions and such got feverish, newspapers were peeled, Roberto's angels are getting sold out, the sidewalk is now a permanent multicolored chalk Dazibao, regularly updated by kids young and old, so much that today I noticed they spread onto the wooden electric post by the cafe, which gave the said post the vague allure of a totem pole (with a little bit of imagination) . Any time of day you can find people sitting out cracking up laughter, or telling delirious stories that sounded like they came out of a magic hat. Those creatures have been more talkative than ever. And those already addicted to the cafe, that you'd see there every day or so, would come 5 or 6 times a day, or just spend most of the day there. You also had those who would storm into the cafe, incredulous, finally starting to admit the reality, "where are we gonna go when the grotto closes?!" . Others saying they wouldn't drink coffee any more. How will we call those? gotta find an equivalent of teatotallers. Watertotallers? The problem is some of those have a problem with water, so that won't work. No, even better maybe, a name for all the witnesses of the last days of the cafe, something like "the tribe of the witnesses of the last days of the saint grotto" now that sounds good.