You join me today in Costa, where I’m scoffing a cinnamon brioche bun. I’m supposed to be getting my hair cut but the barbers was too full and I felt awkward waiting outside on my own.
I’m outside at the back, hunched over a wobbly wooden table. Outdoors still feels the safest, though of course, it’s a little chilly.
There’s a small family with a pug called Allegra out here. Allegra is full of life. A few moments ago they had to stop Allegra from licking a crying toddler - a toddler who was crying because a pug was trying to lick her. I have no idea how it started but for a while there they were locked in a sort of limbic spiral. Allegra, driven by the ancient pack instinct to protect and comfort the young; the toddler responding with both fright and flight.
It feels familiar. Have you ever tried to help someone but found every attempt makes it worse? Probably you’ve been in the opposite situation, where someone with good intentions is accidentally terrorising you. And you can no more communicate that than a baby can reason with a dog.
What else do we have here? A lady (inside) is reading a book called Magpie. I’m guessing it’s about a stolen child or something like you’d get in an ITV drama. She seems into it. She sips a tall hot chocolate.
Further inside, a couple have gone for two teas. He dangles and dips a teabag into a Costa labelled teapot. She bites carefully into a slice of millionaires shortbread, and then delicately wipes the crumbs from her mouth with a napkin.
It was the 90s that did this to us. Before Friends and Frasier, nobody went ‘out’ for coffee. If you did, it was always incidental to the rest of your plan - a quick stir in a greasy spoon or an in-store café. No. To socialise over a hot drink you invited people round. They invited you. You had coffee and biscuits ‘in’ not ‘out’ and, as far as I recall, nobody was ever all that particular about the woefulness of what we now call ‘instant’.
I’m not saying I object by the way. Here I am after all with my cinnamon brioche bun. I just find change so fascinating.
The particularity around coffee though, is probably also detrimental to these places in the long run. Nowadays, way beyond the 1990s, these templated blends are far less exotic than they appeared when Drs Crane used to order them in downtown Seattle. Zimbabwe? You can get it in your local supermarket now. And a lot of people can prep it to perfection for their exquisitely fine-tuned palates, using their own shiny equipment. What Costa and Starbucks give us these days is boring predictability - exactly as Nescafé Gold Blend did in the 80s.
Wherever they are, Ross, Rachel and the gang have long jettisoned the charms of Central Perk for certain. They’re grinding their own beans and chatting about the forthcoming grandchildren and how Joey’s doin’…
A lot of folks here are on their phones too, regardless of their table mates. That’s a thought for another day.
The family have gone now, presumably to take Allegra for a leash-free run around in the park. Magpie lady sighed too and closed her book thoughtfully.
I hope I’d be observant enough to notice if my help was making things worse. Moreover, I hope someone would tell me. Perhaps better to be the translator in the middle who somehow knows how to speak baby and pug, able to reconcile complicated situations of - limbic spirals.
Anyway. Enough people pondering. I’d better get my hair cut.
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