I’ve always properly despised those selfish fools who fail to understand my medicinal need for coffee grants me non negotiable rights over their wishy wash request for a frothy beverage.
Out of my way, caffeine addict coming through¦..” I am want to shout on straightlining the sea of bodies between me and my morning fix. On difficult days, I desperately request an instant infusion directly from the Barista, so ignoring the more traditional cup and saucer convention.
It hasn’t always been this way; growing up in Yorkshire, coffee was the much maligned tipple of those reaching above themselves embodied by hostess trolley and inside toilets. But having migrated south for what feels like the remainder of my life, tea is served pointlessly weak with the bag having been merely wafted over the cup in some kind of bizarre London ritual. Is the spoon sanding up in the cup yet? No? Then put the sodding bag back in then you bloody metrosexual” was a fairly representative dialogue for the first couple of years.
They never did though, and after one exchange in which I was offered nine types of tea but not one of them being Tetley”, I gave up. And just as a rantable aside, what the fuck is breakfast tea? 240 bags in a big box covers all the major tea drinking events for about a month, surely? I’ll tell you what it is, it’s bloody niche marketing and global stupidity for which scorpion pits await.
So coffee it is then. On the plus side, the firm offers up two variants; the first costs a couple of quid but served frothy and hot from a proper machine. The second is a freebie concoction of hot water rafishly mixed with rat poison. The reason it is served up as a no cost option is not due to the magnanimousness of the firm, rather that you’d have to be a screaming mentalist to pay for it.
Therefore, a frisson of excitement shimmied through the entire floor when four straining blokes, in matching shirts and sweat, heaved a freezer sized replacement into place. It was delivered with a small boy whose sole responsibility was to explain the complex operation of the machine to a hundred IT veterans, most with decent degrees. Which of course would not include anything with studies in the title; media, modern, frog-baiting whatever. These are barely night school courses and I’ll be coming back to this very subject at some point.