Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I don’t often visit Bigtown. And when I do It’s usually for a general wander around in different surroundings, just for a change.
My usual routine on such occasions is to stroll along the shops ’til reach Smith’s. Where I pop in for a peruse of all the magazines I have no intention of spending up to four pounds on.
Wait till I get home
Then, realising I’m thirsty, I mentally check all the caffs I could patronise. After which, however parched I might be, I decide to wait till I get home.
The last being a decision I seem to share with just about every other Britisher, male or female, who happens into town to do a bit of shopping, and one that goes far to explain the lack of places one can just relax and watch, a la Continong.
Or maybe not
So I was quite uplifted on my last trip to see a brand new Costa Coffee establishment in situ.
(Well, when I say new I really mean ‘ish’. New to me anyway. It’s been a couple of years since my last visit after all).
I’ve seen Costa places before of course. When cruising on the Other Island. But only in passing. Bikers are more habituated to bacon baguettes saturated in fat and tommy juice, served from lay-by caravans.
So I wandered in to see what I could see before my grey locks and gor blimey trousers were spotted and got me firmly ejected.
I was impressed
I must say I was quite impressed. No sign of the crammed together, nowhere to put your feet, uncomfortable seating we’re all so used to. Instead, yards of open, shiny-wood floor, with the seating tucked quietly into various nooks.
I wouldn’t have been too surprised if Donald O’Conner had darted in and begun dancing all over the place. (Alright, if you don’t know, ask your mum. Or grandma).
And behind the counter two smiling ladies, a huge shiny magic machine and a list of available drinky-poos so unbelievably long it constituted a foreign tongue in its own right.
What to drink?
The only drink I recognised was the latte one. Which is not to say I know what that is either – just that I recognised that I’d seen it before.
Other than that – nothing. Except that heading the list was something named ‘flat white’, which I presumed was a coffee concoction with milk (like latte?), but without the froth.
The shiny machine, turned out to be quite friendly though. Despite having the appearance of a weapon capable of stopping incoming, it issued reassuring little puffs of steam, and uttered little puff of steam-type sighs and squeals. Exactly like all those little branch line locomotives I used to stand next to in long gone stations.
So friendly was it in fact, and so friendly the ladies, that when my turn came to order I was strongly tempted to ask for a Horlicks.
Fortunately perhaps, I decided that would have been pushing my luck. So I went for a black coffee instead. Risky enough in an establishment where coffee was clearly no more than the foundation on which paradise was built.
No-one flinched
But I was mildly reprimanded by having my entirely unlisted choice served up in a cup/mug/bowl so thick and heavy I needed two hands to carry it.
And was further reproved by having to collect my sugar (the anti-green old farty actually uses sugar! In public!). In a handful of paper tubes, three and a half grains per tube.
Thus I staggered to a table, not spilling or slurping. And luckily put the cup/mug/bowl down before I started to sit. Luckily because the seating sank me smoothly a good two inches further down that I had anticipated, and if I had been holding the c/m/b I would undoubtedly have ended having a hot coffee bath.
Costa whata?
It was that that finally tipped me over into a fit of silent chuckles. I mean, the whole scene was so Son Of King’s Road.
Starting with the counter cabinet display of cake bits so tiny they would balance on a fingertip yet priced so ridiculously high you had to look three times and still couldn’t believe it: the immensely high-tech shiny-machine that did little more than boil water just like a kitchen kettle; the ridiculously long list of drinks with names no one could pronounce and almost certainly would never order: and finally the coffee c/m/b that had clearly been designed by some arty type to look ‘cool’, never mind being reasonably usable. And which cost me £3.20 to have filled.
Or – and this has just occurred to me – it was stocked as a deterrent to doddering old codgers who might toddle in and render the place untidy…
No trendies in sight
None of it would have mattered, probably, had the place been filled with the ultra-trendy, ain’t I hot in this little number types, all cooing ‘Yaah’ and ‘cool’ and ‘So I said To him, like’ at one another with every sentence.
But it wasn’t. What there was, almost inevitably on the Island, were a couple of sets of holidaymaker oldies grimly squeezing out the last drop from their pot for two and vowing never to be ambushed by such prices again.
Plus a leather clad biker who had evidently dropped off for a drop of refreshment, and was probably reflecting that if the Island was only civilised enough to boast a lay-by with a Greasy Spoon in it, he could have had a bacon sarny, side of chips and a Mars Bar to go for less than he was paying for his cardboard container of frothy coffee.
And a musty old gent in the corner, shoulders heaving as he struggled to manage his coffee.
Perhaps though I’d hit on a quiet time. I hope so. I hope Costa Coffee prospers enough to stay the course, providing an oasis of graphene culture on our Island.
As for me – I’d like to think I’ll return one day. But I probably won’t. What I’ll likely do is wait ’til I get home.
Image: Dave on Flickr under CC BY 2.0
