The Tiara has not been on good form just lately. Life has taken yet another one of its regular wrong turnings and left me up a gum tree with a leaky paddle. First, I thought I would vent my spleen at the injustice of my lot through my blog, but then the vacuum cleaner broke so the Dyson felt the full force of my wrath instead. The result of all this anger is the vacuum cleaner lies a broken piece of revolutionary engineering in the spare room and I am still shouting at whatever God happens to be passing by.
Thus, with a dusty floor and a heavy heart, I plod off to my local Costa Coffee to sit and watch my world pass by. I often tweet about the regulars that flock there, so I thought as part a creative writing therapy to lift my mood, I would blog about the characters that share my hour every morning between 9 and 10am. They are all real people; their monikers merely protect their identity and save myself from a black eye should any of them ever find out I am writing about them.
Despite an abundance of tea shops, we have two Costa Coffee shops in this town (and a Starbucks, but that's a whole different kettle of mackerel) and they all do a roaring trade with the more elderly population who seem to be more than happy to pay £2.45 for a cappuccino*.
*According to my mother (who purports to know about these things) the older person only ever orders cappuccinos because they know what's coming; whereas (according to her) no-one really knows what a latte involves – it's one of those exotic foreign practices – the unknown, like spaghetti bolognese in the 1970s. My mother feels the same way about pesto and even today, still won't entertain feta cheese.
Anyway, back to the coffee shop sightings. First up is one of my favourites:
NAME: ESPRESSO MAN SPECIES: Elderly Male
SIGHTING: Common, All year CALL: ESpresso, black
PLUMAGE: Raincoat, flat cap, shopping bag
This old fellow orders the smallest, but strongest espresso Costa can make. Espresso man is about 90 years old and I imagine he must have the stomach lining of a mountain goat, because he drinks this stuff every day. A little while back, my husband once tried an espresso. The resulting energy buzz meant he cut the lawns, washed the windows, took the rubbish to the dump and started to sort out the garage. However, the buzz eventually wilted and quickly curtailed this unnatural phenomona of movement. He retired to his bed with a headache, leaving the garage as a work-in-progress - where it remains to this day. He has never touched the coffee again.
Espresso man is a whole different specimen however. He is a tiny, bald Irish man who wears an oversized, beige raincoat and a muddy-green, chequered flat cap. He shuffles when he walks; is always alone and carries a jute shopping bag which appears to be empty apart from a copy of the Daily Mail. He is quite deaf but can cuss in 4 languages (Gaelic, English, Italian and French - I happen to know this for a fact). He reads the newspaper aloud and whenever he comes across something that he considers ridiculous (which is nearly on every page – it is the Daily Mail after all) then the effing and jeffing begins. Most of the regulars and staff are very fond of the old guy and tend to let him get on with it, but he still causes much consternation to whoever happens to be sitting on the next table (Yummy mummys, tourists and posh people particularly get outraged). Espresso Man says his late wife had kissed the Blarney Stone and could talk and talk and talk; then she got Alzheimer's and everything went quiet... and then she died. His motto to life is: "never live too long".
Apart from me, Espresso Man is the only other customer I have seen to have his coffee delivered to his table.
Next sighting: Henry V
