My name is Ben, and in the summer of 2009 I will leave my normal life as a student in London and become a Student of French Café Culture, haunting the streets of great cities, towns and villages in France in order to understand the role of the great institution of the café in French society. I will be inhabiting the role of a French café regular, talking to the clientele, sampling the food and drink, the art, the music and the politics in order to find out whether in the 21st Century these cafés and the people in them are still as important as they have been throughout their history. I am able to have this fantastic opportunity because I was awarded a scholarship by the Peter Kirk Memorial Fund, for whom a page of this site is dedicated. Throughout the preparation and undertaking of this great investigation I will be keeping this blog as a record of my travels, but also in order that you can live my intellectual, emotional and physical journey with me, but without having to put in the hours of toil actually sitting in the cafés. I hope you enjoy it.

Ben.