It started with a goodbye.

In 2015, as West Ham prepared to leave Upton Park, I made a book. A way to hold onto something that mattered. I called it No Place Like Home. A nod to what was being lost, and to something more personal too: my dad’s favourite film, The Wizard of Oz. If you look down, you’re standing on the yellow brick road.

What began as a one-off became something people carried with them and, by 2018, it had grown into a magazine. Stocked across the country, shipped around the world.

Stories of football, but really stories of people. Of belonging.

In 2022, it found a new form again. This time a podcast. Conversations with the creatives and activists shaping how we see the game and, in turn, each other.

Then, in 2023 and new to town, it came back to where it always pointed. Home.

Club de Cafe started in our kitchen in Leigh-on-Sea as a simple idea: bring people together. Create the kind of place you want to walk into. Again and again.

Now it’s 2026.

And you’re standing in it.

A space built from everything that came before –books, pages, voices, coffee – all circling the same idea: connection.

This is No Place Like Home.

And it’s yours as much as mine.

Three young men sitting outside in front of a building, holding coffee cups, with an unfinished interior visible behind them.

I’m a writer and creative based in Leigh-on-Sea. My work began with a book made during West Ham’s final season at Upton Park — an attempt to hold onto something as it changed — and has since grown into magazines, a podcast, and spaces built around a simple idea: connection.

No Place Like Home is the latest of those spaces. It exists because of conversations, belief, and the support and faith of people like Mark and Jon (pictured left), who have helped bring this dream to life.

What started as something personal has always been something shared.