Now,
as you may be aware from an earlier article, I often frequent coffee shops.
Notably, this is so that I can find a nice spot to open up my temperamental
machine with buttons and commence writing things – after the contraption
completes a years’ worth of updates, and manages to wake up properly, of
course.
Upon my many and varied visits to
many and varied coffee shops in my local area, I have noted, for all of their
little differences and unique seating positions to each other, that virtually,
they are all the same. It’s not just the day-to-day operations, it’s the
patrons; the many, disgruntled, strangely, perversely, and unequivocally
unusual patrons that seem to daily frequent these places as an almost temporary
daylight residency. I cannot simply talk about just one person, though, in
honesty, I could fill a library with accounts of each individual that I have
come across at various points in these places, but I would just like to quickly
and concisely (if this is even possible) condense a good proportion of these
into a good few pages of self righteous good old fashioned complaining. It’s
what I do best, sorry.
Firstly, I would like to ask why
parents, mostly, on their own, or meeting in groups (not always middle aged
women – I don’t want to get into a sexism debate here) believe that frequenting
a coffee shop with an infant is at all a good idea? Here are just a few reasons
why it isn’t. A child has sweet French explicit gesture to do in a coffee shop.
Even these Babychino’s or warmed milk – effectively – is not a good enough
reason to take a small child that should be in the outdoors, or at very least, somewhere
where they can gain some form of education (after they’ve been subjected to the
endless mind numbing that is the morning television programming schedule),
either by playing games, eating mud pies, dissecting worms, dressing up or down
(depending on their level of perversity) dolls of some description, or doing
anything remotely more pleasurable that being sat down on a seat by a parent in
a place entirely occupied otherwise by ladies at lunch or professionals sat
lapping up a newspaper with a skinny latte or some other accompaniment that
they believe makes them appeal sophisticated and youthful, and is the general
societal equivalent of having a form of education these days. ‘Ooo, I’m
dribbling at the sight of this young chap reading The Daily Pictionary News’
(i.e The Daily Mail) ‘he must be ever
so sophisticated and dashing. I’ll divorce my husband immediately.’
If the sheer presence of this
chronic moronic person and their ineptitude is not enough to deter you from
having any kind of relaxing enjoyment upon drinking a hot foamy liquid, then
potentially, this changes when the infant that they have brought with them is
placed into a chair and asked in a dire tone ‘Now, do you think that you can sit here quietly and behave for Mummy whilst I
sit and play on my mobile device for a good proportion of our time in here
until I make conversation with that dashing young chap over there?’ to which
the infant replies ‘yes mummy’ but in its head is thinking ‘ha, not a chance.
You made me miss In The Night Garden
this morning, you crazy bitch. The first chance I get, I’m going to throw my drink
on the floor, then I’m not going to stop screaming until you swear profoundly
in my face, thus rendering yourself a hopeless and horrible parent, and human
being come to think of it, and if you’re still reluctant to remove me from this
horrible seat so that all of these old grandmas stop staring at me, and calling
me a lovely little thing, I’ll do something really repulsive such as have a
little bit of sick come up onto the table, or at the very least, have a really
large excreting upon this ridiculous seat you have placed me upon, which, by
the way, I keep slipping off on account of me being under two feet tall, and
the chair is made of polished wood. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather
skip all of that and leave in a really stinking mood and go somewhere more
desirable.’
This of course doesn’t happen, and
the infant does indeed carry out its master plan, potentially, if you’re really
lucky, two or maybe even a large group of these are all in occupation at the
same time, which is quite simply a marvellous sight to behold, a series of parents
losing their stuff with little children because they didn’t want to sit still in a coffee shop of all places. How
positively rude and inconsiderate of them!
You can sometimes see all of the
children conspiring together, unbeknown to the parents, planning a great
disastrous showing of rebellion all in unison. It’s a simply wonderful
experience.
At the opposite end of the spectrum
are the grey haired wonders of society that find all things about going for a
coffee together positively pointless. (I hope you’re picking up on this
alliteration.) From the moment that they walk in together, or as close as
together as being as far away from each other as possible is, they sit down,
silently, after deciding after a lengthy discussion which one of the four
hundred and seventy three seats available would be best to sit in, to which
when they decide, on the verge of sitting down, to change their minds and opt
to move to the table closest to yourself with a sharp glance of hatred towards
you as they park their buttocks after careful manoeuvring of furniture and
complaining about how distasteful everything about the place is. Continuing to
adore all things silent and repulsive, they stare at the table with glumness
and utter obscenities to each other under their breaths which neither of them
can hear on account of them both being ridiculously deaf. After a short period
of complaining about the coffee being cold even though they virtually gulped it
as soon as it hit the table, they disperse after a short decisive comment,
something along the lines of ‘come on then’ and with that they depart leaving
room for another couple of geriatric bundles of joy to take their place, but
not before they stare at you with sheer discontent on their way out.
Then there is everyone else in the
coffee shop. So, this may come as a bit of a shock to you, but everyone else in
the coffee shop is doing something that doesn’t require them to actually be
there. Sure, you’ll think, with an assured confidence, people just want to go
for a coffee. But they don’t. Not in the slightest. They arrive unsure of what
it is they came for, unsure as they survey their surroundings either with
amazement – because let’s face it, a place that has tables chairs and customers
is a pretty unusual sight – or with assured persistence to make this the most
dissatisfying and unconformable experience they will ever endure. They get to
the till to order their drink, or if it’s table service they sit and wait
indecisively whether this was indeed at all a good idea, and then when
happening upon being served they ‘umm’ and ‘err’ for what seems like an
eternity and mumble things like ‘gosh, I really don’t know what to have, I mean
there’s so much choice.’ What they’re really thinking of course is ‘But the
thing I do want isn’t on the menu. I just came here because it seemed an
appropriate place to spend some time in the day and so that I could gain free
WiFi to update my social media status about what a lovely time I’m having
‘tagging’ myself and ‘checking in’ to the place, because, let’s be honest,
that’s what means something in life, right? I mean, if I don’t let people know that I was here then what will they think I’m
doing with my day? No, this is all too important, and is such a huge distraction
that to be honest, I never actually considered that I never really fancied a
coffee in the first place. In which case’, they then speak ‘I’ll have a skinny latte please.’
With that they sit in glum solitude
conferring with a newspaper or a handheld device so that they seem occupied enough
to warrant sitting with their coffee. The truth of it is, of course, as I
observe when I sit there, researching, reading, or doing anything else that
makes me blend into the furniture of the place for as cheaply as possible
without being asked ‘excuse me, sir, but I notice you’ve finished your tap
water, would you like something else?’ (‘Err, to be left alone would be quite
marvellous, thank you,’) that none of these people have a real purpose for
being there at all. I mean, how many of them are sitting there for an
afternoon’s session of writing, of something? Clearly, unless nappy changing
and updating social media in a coffee shop constitutes doing something remotely
pleasurable and worthwhile with a day, then really, I just want to say to these
people, please, for all that is sane and right with everything, stay away from
coffee shops. If nothing else, you’re giving me too much writing material.
