SURPRISED & DELIGHTED

We get settled in seats at the back of the cinema and realise that the youngest has left his glasses at home and can’t see the screen.

"It’s okay," says my wife. "We’ll move forward when it starts, there’s plenty of room."

But people are coming in all the time and I can’t live with that level of uncertainty. So I go off to get our seats moved. We’re still on the ads so there’s plenty of time. On the way out I clock the rows further forward that have spaces - ammunition if needed. But actually I’m quietly confident; the whole thing’s shaping up like something out of a customer service training video and I’m sure I’m going to win the sympathy of the Odeon staff.

NAIL IN THE COFFEE

This morning I ordered an Americano instead of a Latte. With hot milk for prolonged rapture. And it made me wonder where this is going. I’m guessing the next step is drop the milk. Then add an extra shot (whatever that is). Then two extra shots, then three, four - I don’t know, what’s the maximum? When do they pat you on the shoulder and say ‘I think you’ve had enough son’ and alert the security staff to see you off the premises?

For years I held out against coffee. It was tea all the way, the comforting and benign ritual of bubbly water on herby pillows. The aural equivalent of a hot bath - every half hour. Because that’s the thing about tea. It’s such a non event that you just keep doing it. Not so much a drink as a periodic change of texture. In those days the coffee drinkers were a dark and mysterious under-class. Masters of the infernal filtering apparatus that summoned forth the pungent black liquid of their desire. I treated them with suspicion, nay disdain.