A Gripe of the Times

It is always disheartening when you are served bad coffee. Some may call my passion for food austere, as I treat my fare with the utmost respect and expect others to also. So when you present me with a mound of steaming shite on a plate, being a sensitive soul I can’t help but feel deeply disgusted, disappointed and, to be forthright, personally attacked. Whether it be over-boiled, over-seasoned, over-stewed, over-brewed or sat for too long beneath the warming lights drooping sadly as a consequence, I am driven near the point of tears.

Upon discovery of my badly extracted coffee the other morning you may well understand my state of distress. Being in the car, and driving madly to an important appointment I couldn’t easily ask them to make me another cup. Panicking, I screeched the car to a halt, did a desperate U-turn mid street, and careened back to the café to return the coffee. And then it struck me that I didn’t have time to park the car, let alone wait for the young drip behind the counter to re-make my order. So I screeched the car to a halt again, repeated the U-turn, and drove to my appointment, neglected coffee cooling rapidly in the cup holder.

Later that day I found myself brooding over the madness of that event now past, and began to wonder; when did life become such a rush that we have to settle for second rate coffee? A wave of nostalgia flooded over as I reminisced about the seemingly endless days of my tomboy childhood.

Now there are never enough hours in each day to do the things I need, let alone want. I, like many others become so wound up in my own self-importance, and the pressures of time and of conforming to time, that sometimes I get an anarchistic urge to escape. I tell the world I’m ill, and flee with the dog to lounge for hours by the sea, and wander the hilltops. I imagine, if all of life were fragments of this one tranquil day, we would have the time to breath, to love, to give food the respect it deserves, and with luck, to never have to drink a bad coffee.