It had taken me hours to figure out the perfect waiting place. I searched various websites and researched reviews and looked at locations. It was important to stay away from the chain shops. I wanted an independent coffee shop that felt as if I had walked into someone’s living room. Not just someone’s but a friend’s. Finally, I found a place down the hill about 25 minutes away from where I was. 25 minutes is quite far when you have to walk in the cold rain of January while snow mixed with raindrops whips my face.
It was a mission. Libraries had shut down and there were none open at this early time of day. I needed somewhere warm. I remember JK Rowling was writing her books in coffee shops. I wonder what that must have felt like. I sought inspiration, the one writer’s look for.
I don’t even like coffee. I just like hanging out in coffee shops. I love the smell of coffee more than coffee itself. In the corner, under a bright canopy the most local, neighbourhoody adorable coffee shop appeared.
One big table to share and a small table for two was all there was. The entrance was where three streets, like old friends, meet. There, in the corner with a red and green stripy, retractable awning. Just like a stall in a market town. Big windows displaying coffees, teas and snacks from around the world and the polished old-fashioned coffee machine were all visible.
I ordered my cappuccino with almond milk and sat down in the middle of the large wooden table’s long side, on the bench with the grey cushions. To my right, a couple were discussing their imminent redecorating of their flat and the education of their two primary school aged girls. To my left, a mother wrapped in shawls and a long cardigan was speedily downing her espresso. Next to her handbag on the right of her, laid a tiny bundle, which I thought was her second bag.
I was sitting there with my notebook, planner and phone. I took photos of my coffees to compare the art of the nutmilk foam. I find it fascinating that you can take a snapshot of a moment and post it online and share it and that people will look at it. Maybe they will think oh what a show off or maybe they will think I would want that cup of coffee or tea right now. Maybe they don’t think anything much at all. I don’t do selfies and I do not promote a product. I just like catching a moment on a photograph and oftentimes this sparks a story or poem or something to write home about.
It so happens, I catch details in that photograph that I did not notice otherwise. I enjoy looking at that moment passed. And that’s when I realise I may dwell on the past. The photograph amalgamates what was. The photograph fuses, marks, remembers and then you swipe and a new memory arrives reviving the previous recollections of events and moments.
Photographs maintain colours, words and emotions of a moment they’ve caught. We may look happy, but is it tears that veil of happiness is shadowing? A lipgloss spot lingers on the coffee cup hanging off the rim of that very same cup.
Then the lady to my left lets off a sigh. I don’t take pictures of strangers, but if I could this would be a perfect shot. Words cannot depict her emotion. The disappointment anointed in her face. The large handbag is moving. Is there a pup in that bundle?
A baby in the coffee shop has woken up. The disappointment harnessed by the lack of sleep and communication with a partner. Tales of dreams come true with a baby and reality slaps you in the face. All her scarves and wraparounds are suddenly formed into sails of protection for the baby being nursed. Mothers are magicians. Quick, fast, intelligent and super ladies even if we may not feel like it.
Constantly criticised. Blessed mothers.
She smiles at me as if to get my approval. Dressed in beautiful hues of grey, matching the dim tones of the sky behind her. The window and the clouds at the back frame her. With the curved window top, this could well be the modern Madonna.
I don’t look, but I see her and her bundle. I feel her joy and exhaustion. I have been there. I missed that time of going to coffee shops with my baby bundle. There was never time. I don’t bear a grudge. She has worked hard for this moment and the one before. It belongs to her.
But I cannot help but wonder. How conditioned I have been too to lay my critical thoughts on someone I do not know. She’s drinking espresso and breastfeeding? That cannot be right. Caffeine and babies surely need to be kept separate. Then again who am I to keep a woman away from her lifeline?
Note to self!
It’s not my baby.
It’s not my baby.
There’s decaf, full of processed poison. Let’s hope it’s caffeinated at least healthier.
She picked up the baby’s cue. The happy bundle has finished. There is no changing room facility in this coffee shop. Restlessness is a fact.
She leaves and with her, all the possible stories leave too. But do they? Or do they stay behind too? The seat cushion is formed after her. A small dent is still visible on the cushion where the bundle laid.
All those people I see every day. I create stories. If I’m right or wrong, I will never know. People interrupt me. If I lose my train of thought, I wonder if what I was originally writing was not good enough. I change direction. At times, I involve the person who interrupted me into my story. It’s their fault they asked for the attention. What role they get and what character they are assigned is obvious!
Alone at last, at this large table in the middle of the café. The shop assistant comes to sit diagonally across me. I would like my distance and space. I don’t know what it means someone sitting this close to me.
If I was writing a story, I’d want that person to jump into this moment like a comic strip. This shop assistant is annoying me. She chews and smacks with her lips as if she is eating with false teeth and she uses all cheek and lip power humanely possible.
Not looking. I pretend I am enthralled by my own reading and writing but all I can hear is the food being ground down by the saliva juices of her mouth. Someone has turned her volume up and pressed the slow motion button at the same time.
Vulgarity eating. There is a disease where people cannot stand sounds, misophonia. It comes from the Greek and means hating of voices or sounds. It is the unreasonable emotion evoked when hearing certain repetitive noises by other people around us.
In her presence, the music so pleasantly aired inside the coffee shop has drowned away. Now, she chews with her mouth open and as she is hastily swallowing the food and propping the next mouthful in as she burps. To think that she made my coffee and served it, my eyes grow bigger.
But if it weren’t for her, would I even be writing this story? The couple who were looking at the article in the running magazine; the baby bundle that was nursing and the two American friends that were so noisy and made fun of British culture and using the free NHS for free antibiotics to self medicate for any ailments they thought they had; the doctor paediatrician who came for a coffee with her dog Lola, an Irish setter and to the photograph salvager who treats old photos and brings them back to life they disappeared from my memory in this blip of a moment.
Those people form the community of the area around the coffee shop. Its assistant would lose her job or shut the place down. But I realised she only did this to get rid of me. I was there for a long time. Maybe I disrupted her routine. I had no place to go. I ordered a second coffee before she came to sit at my table. I didn’t want to go out in the rain and the cold. I had to sit around and wait before I could go back to the vet and pick up my Labrador.
She was now slurping down copious amounts of bitter green tea. The loose tealeaves clearly got stuck down her throat and now she was coughing without covering her mouth. Let any pandemic aside, but it is generally thought as quite rude not covering your mouth. Only thing left now is farting… Well she burped and she farted.
Remember it is not a baby I am talking about. Actually, she did not fart. And if she did, I did not notice. I had my headphones on and I went back to my book. My planner was busy making mental notes of all the upcoming events and appointments that my pen kept writing down. I was on autopilot. I could not sense any smell at this point either as the coffee roasters in the basement let off their freshly roasted aroma.
I returned to drinking my coffee. With every sip a long brown sugary note lingered on as it did not want to cross the finishing line. It clambered on and I hanged on to it. Sugar more than coffee.
Coffee.
Co-dependency.
Caffeine.
Dangerous.
The sweetness of it blurs out reality. Not drinking coffee regularly made me almost delirious. My stomach felt like a psychedelic album gone wrong and my brain in some type of fog.
I counted the time backwards to double check what time I needed to pick up Woody. Poor fellow. He must be feeling as I am after two coffees. I kept drinking water to rehydrate. Why do I do this? Coffee, we suffer under your curse like a magic potion you have got us enthralled. Coffee houses are the church of non-believers and a bad religion makes us still believe. This is how we get subdued to oblivion by your chocolate brown brew.
I seek a momentarily refuge by getting up to get more water. I return to my seat. Softened landing by the grey cushion, I lean back on the white wall and suffer. What this coffee puts me through.
People swear by this concoction and many miserably fail to wake up without it. No other guests around me can feel my pain. No one suffers in silence like I do. No conversation can commence in the state that I am currently in and I wonder how some rely on this fantasy to be able to function. The heart races. Coffee is no survival.
This must be what the monumental gateway to panic attacks feel like. I take deep breaths. Fill every part of my lungs with oxygen.
I took one more sip of water and got my coat on. I think it was time to make that walk up the hill, past Waterlow and the Highgate Cemetery.
Then I remembered the other time I went for coffee and tea. I had been walking with a friend around Tower Bridge and we ended up going to St Katharine’s Dock. It’s just that she meant Shad Thames but said St Katharine’s Dock.
Nevertheless, I got the seats while my friend ordered our drinks. We talked about books. Suddenly, a lady sat down next to me, while throwing daggers at me. She treated me as if I had invaded her space in her living room. I tried to make more room for her. Then, I realised she had taken the prime table, next to ours, and she was eating a large bowl of salad; one of those Buddha bowls, a coffee and a juice. Quite an indulgent lunch.
The lady who was giving me looks, was wearing an apron. A member of staff! She treated this place as hers, even though she was an employee. But she was the boss in her world and in her eyes it was ok to treat a customer who was only having tea quite disrespectfully. There were no gluten free options. My friend had a walnut and coffee cake with her coffee while I had a cup of tea. Plastic ridden teabag with ancient, tasteless tea. The bag had more flavour than those poor tealeaves.
Again, I wondered. Where is that barrier between customer and shop assistant? Where is the respect towards a customer? How come an employee takes up space for 4 people although she is one?
I wouldn’t want to see my doctor queuing up in my doctor’s surgery.
People surely miss to realise that having a cup of coffee or a tea and cake with a friend is more than that. With friends you have wisdom to share and the hot drink is just there as a side kick. The main attraction is being there with our friend, sharing thoughts, gossiping, spilling beans and not worrying about any fears. You don’t want the coffee barista listening in to the conversation you are having!
I ought to know that if I take my thoughts for a walk in a public place anyone can hear them. And so it is. And so they do.
But then again, just because I tend to listen in to conversation across tables does not mean others do. Very funny. Who am I kidding? When does a question sentence not end with a question mark?
Third time lucky, and there is one more place where the coffee barista sat down with the customers. She was talking about her upcoming trip to Colombia and it turned out being about powders and drugs and sabbatical in the same go.
At the end of the day, if it does not scare customers off and if it does not get employers to change staff, who am I to worry. I just write, without listening.
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