It smells like coffee

It happens that I have a wander around town and every now and then my feet seem to, all by themselves, walk towards a coffee house. I can sit outside (or in the vicinity), with a book and just watch people going in and a couple of minutes later come back out with a papercup, sometimes small and sometimes large. And you can tell it is really hot by the way they're holding it by placing as few fingers as possible around it and never, ever, letting the palm of the hand grip the cup properly.

I think it's possible to tell what sort of coffee a person drinks. The lady "over there" - she's a stresser, she won't wait for her coffee to cool off so she must have something with milk in it, a Latte. The guy who so obviously wants to impress the girl he's with - he'll order a double Espresso but secretly wishes that he'd ordered a smooth Cappuchino instead and he knows he'll regret it later when his heart starts to race but he'll just pretend it's because he fancies the girl.

As for the girl - she doesn't drink coffee at all but she doesn't want to seem old-fashioned and order tea as it's too much "old british lady in a knitted cardi with holes in", so she orders a Mocha Coffee as the sweet, but sadly too subtle, taste of chocolate will manage to get her through at least 1/2 of it and then she'll use the excuse of it having gone "too cold". Let's just hope for her sake that there won't be too many silent pauses where she'll have to take sip after sip to get away from the awkwardness.

And that older gentleman? Well he's here because it's the new thing to do. It's no longer allowed to smoke at work so he's had to quit (not to mention the years of endless nagging from the wife about it) and so here he is. It's his break, he's getting a Black Coffee but most of all he longs for a quick fix of the instant coffee he used to stir up in the office kitchen and then run out on the street for a fag in one hand and his "best daddy in the world" cup in the other. Oh how the world has changed.

And oh, we must not forget those who walk around with an empty cup long after they've finished the coffee and it's not because it's difficult to find a bin where you can dispose of the cup. It's because they don't know what to do with their hands and a cup gives them something to hold on to. Not to mention that they think they look like someone "on the go" + it's fashionable these days. A couple of years back it was water bottles. Now it's coffee... The modern and acceptable adult security blanket.

Before I end this rather strange monologue I must say something about [some of] the barristas. I agree that some of them are really good at what they're doing, they are able to make nice little figures and it all looks almost too nice to drink. But. Do they really have to be such snobs? It's as if customers queue up to be rudely treated by some conceited bastard in an apron that trails on the dirty floor. It's a new take on Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi" but here we can call them the coffee fascists instead. They actually charge you to treat you as an amoeba. There's got to be something wring when people are willing to take it for a cup of coffee. It can't be all that good. Surely not?!

Me? Oh no, I don't drink coffee. Sometimes I have some of the froth of Boyfriend's Cappuchino but that's as far as it goes. I will say that it smells lovely and perhaps one day I'll grow up and be able to join the queue of those who know, or don't know, coffee but until then I'll have fun making up stories about those who order it.

And I don't stalk coffee houses all that often... I'm not that sad.