2. Coffee and Cigarettes... The Watford Observer.

Coffee 1

I sat alone with a lightly pasteurised mango and passion fruit branded drink and a mint-tea. This was a home from home for me, sitting amongst friends all rushing around to please the people lucky enough to have weekends to free to have a coffee. I was the other side of the counter today. I was the envy of all those who did not want to be here.

Fuck she was lovely. I wanted her. This situation should’ve been easy. She smiled and threw, with great confidence the opening to a conversation in my direction. ‘Hello’.

Caught in the beauty of her accent and the sheer poetry of her language I proceeded with ill-fated fearlessness to counter her interest. I replied in a manner that was not language, not a form of communication. I might as well have just sneezed on her. Actually, that would’ve been better. At least I could perform an appropriate apology for that action. I could offer a tissue, a wipe or anything to clean up the mucus. I couldn’t apologise for being utterly useless. That would make me even more the Hugh Grant that I didn’t want to be - this time.

I turned away, smiling. Walked towards my table. I sneezed. Some unassuming customer’s cream Danimac was lightly drizzled upon. Never mind.

All the wrong doings of the world can be contemplated and solutions offered on a day when all you drink is coffee. You can do the same on beer as well, but everybody becomes too vocal and your point becomes increasingly feeble in a furore of Fosters and confused in a compendium of Kronenburg. Besides, I was on my own, so coffee it had to be; Society would frown. Plus, it was 9am and the pubs were shut. Cockayne. I was here, a state of idleness that could only be created with a latte of this nature. This wasn’t decaf, it wasn’t skinny, it had not the faintest whisper of a cocoa dusting, it was a latte. It was no more difficult to make than the 45 the barista had to make beforehand. Everything was in a state of equilibrium.

This was to be my day of coffee and fags, a chance for a person who is not at all sure of how they are meant to fit into this world to try and make sense of the maelstrom spiralling around him. I knocked back the last of my latte with the conviction of a cowboy throwing back one last whiskey for the road. I ordered another latte. The Polish Goddess stood like a statue - of a Goddess… It was not because she was standing still, (even though she was) or that she was made of stone (although my heart was slowing to a point where you’d have to drill pretty fucking hard to draw any blood from it). Or maybe that was time slowing. Maybe that’s the power of Loreal making her hair dance like a cobra enticed from its basket. Maybe it was the Herbal Essences throwing about my most carnal desires to the point of screaming in ecstasy.

“I’ll have what he’s having” Brigadier Berghaus commanded as the arrival latte broke my concentration. He was a man in his 50s, no different to any of the other patrons this morning except that he was standing next to me in the queue…