Coffee House

(a lyric micro-essay by Liam Starkey, a writer living in Manchester, United Kingdom)

My first memory of coffee is having an espresso scented silver coffee pot as a child.

After that coffee was instant (or made with a percolator at Christmas or parent’s 1980s dinner parties).

Through A-levels coffee was rocket fuel for my studies (mum saying don’t drink too much). Fuel for late nights on the first days of the internet, still awake at 4 am and it got light. There was a brand called ‘Rocket Fuel’ with added ‘guarana’ (maybe illegal now or maybe more legal??).

Then coffee was Central Perk, the 90s, third place coffee shops cropping up everywhere. I drank mocha. Or drank in Borders cafe.

I can’t list all the coffee but now it is 2024…

I am on a disability cheque, about to get a second. I need a PT job for my ‘permitted work’. I am thinking a coffee shop could be a chill job. But then I go into my local branch of Caffe Nero (blue-black and gold signage). The private equity firm owned dump is far from ‘chill’…. the work is not a ‘hangout’ it seems f****** regimented as f***.

Bummer so no idealised job chatting all day to students, gamers and stoners??

‘We were all sat round the fire singing and clapping/Man!! what the hell happened?’

[Smash Mouth lyrics]

Who bought the world?

Who b***** the world?

Who set fire to the world …and walked away??

Where does this leave coffee?

hmmm

It’s fairtrade Italian ground coffee in my fridge..

One response to “Coffee House”

  1. kironreid Avatar
    kironreid

    I like this short narrative by Liam Starkey. He obviously missed or doesn’t remember the Nescafe years when that was very popular (my Mum still buys the red topped jar though I do prefer Gold Blend or copies – more or less premium – for an instant). I like Caffe Nero. I always stick up for the chains because people forget how awful most coffee was in cafes and caffs and non existent in pubs, between the end of traditional coffee shops and department store cafes after the 1980s and the arrival of the new chain coffee shops in the late 1990s. (I’m typing this from the Caffe Nero at Bridge Street in Chester now). I love the ritual of making my filter coffee with a simple inexpensive plastic cone and filter papers, my wife prefers the stronger caffetiere. Neither of us can work the stove top coffee pots and for years thought Dante’s third circle of hell was trying to work people Nespresso or similar pod machines. Nescaffe sachets and Central Perk theme bars are both still popular in parts of Serbia (so is Only Fools and Horses) but you can find plenty of craft coffee shops as well with coffee I describe as sour and bitter, though the descriptions are always wonderful. Back to my medium milky cappucino. Enjoy your Italian fair trade and everyone else their coffee (and to my friend Igor in Zaporizhzhia who early every morning after night Russian missile air alerts randomly sends me a enjoy you morning coffee or tea meme, in Ukrainian).

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