It’s 9am and I’m feeling a little tired, which is not a great place to be when you haven’t started work yet. Thankfully coffee seems to have been invented for this sort of thing. However,. I’m a traditional Irishman, reared on eight cups of strong tea a day. So coffee is an alien concoction to me, as foreign as Tiramisu and Falafel. I was sixteen years old before I tasted a cup of Brazil’s finest. My brother, who liked to think of himself as a debonair peacock among the dull grey pigeons of 1980’s Ireland, had purchased a jar of Maxwell House (which I later discovered is the Old Spice of the coffee world) and laid down an instruction to my poor beleaguered Mother that she was to deliver a cup of the said product with a dash of milk and two spoons of sugar to him each morning.
My Mother, as was her way, told him to take a very long walk off a very short pier and so the jar stayed in our cupboard for eternity, alongside the other unused products such as curry powder and soda stream concentrate.
I came in late one night from my high paying job collecting glasses in the local pub and decided to test out the strange elixir in the cupboard. All my TV heroes, for example, were coffee drinkers and even the posh kids at school would come in with stories about whipped cream extravagances that went on in their big houses on the hill. The result was the worst thing I had tasted since I mistook our Dog’s abolitions for a Mars Bar when I was four. Then I remembered that I’d had the same reaction when I first drank beer and that perseverance paid off in that regard.
So I have been an occasional coffee drinker ever since, although I still struggle to tell the difference between a flat white and a skinny latte (except that the latte is clearly made with milk extracted from skinny cows) and the much maligned Maxwell House tastes the same to me as freshly ground premium blend.
Melbourne thinks it has the best coffee in the world so it would be remiss of me not to try it out. I’ve started cycling to work a few days each week and when I do so; I reward myself with a latte and muffin from the little cafe at the base of our building. Li works the coffee machine there like a steam locomotive driver in the19th Century and knows me by name now which suggests that I eat a lot more muffins than I’d care to admit.
She has taken to leaving a little slice of cake on the lid of my cup, which I’ve noticed she only does for special customers and people who by their shape suggest that they really, really like cake. I’m not sure which category I fall into but I like to think that I’m in the special customer club. Some shops do loyalty cards. This one does little cakes and I know which I prefer.
My muffin choice is dependent on my healthy food intake for that week. I like to comply with Victorian State Government recommendations and consume 5 portions of fruit and veg each day. If I’m struggling, I supplement my diet with an apple or blueberry muffin. If I’ve done well, by perhaps consuming some pear cider or strawberry ice-cream, I’ll reward myself with a chocolate muffin, safe in the knowledge that I have dodged the food police for another week.
When I leave Li’s café, I have a choice of turning left or right. The distance back to my desk is the same both ways, but the right hand side is busier and you are more likely to bump into someone than if you turn left.
Normally at this point, both hands are busy with carrying duties, so I nibble the small slice of cake on the top of the cup like an oversized mouse. It’s not a sight I am keen to share with the general public, so I normally take the quiet route.
This morning however, I was a little sleepy and turned right without thinking. I had hardly walked two meters before I was stopped by a recruitment consultant of limited acquaintance. During the boom years, these people were matched only by Estate Agents and Bank Executives in the ease with which they made money. Now they sweep the streets where broken dreams are thrown. It’s humbling to watch them working for a living for a change. But I work in a bank, so perhaps I shouldn’t throw stones.
Their sales technique is overwhelming however. They want to be your best friend, which is an uncomfortable feeling for us accountants, who take years to trust somebody enough to look up from our shoes. She spent ten minutes telling me how well I looked, how business was booming and how she had a fantastic candidate that she was saving just for me.
The cup was slowly burning into the palm of my hand to the point where I felt that skin was about to come off. So I mumbled my excuses and left. As I ascended in the lift I thought about all those options we are faced with in life. All those figurative forks in yellow woods that we come across. How different would our lives be now if we’d turned right out of the disco toilets back in 1985 and not left? Turning left meant bumping into that girl who ended up breaking your heart, who made you leave town and move abroad where you ended up winning the local lottery and being hit by a bus as you crossed the road to collect the cheque.
Life is all about choices. As a Woody Allen character once said “We define ourselves by the choices we have made”. But I don’t think there is any point getting caught up in it. That’s just the way life is. But I will give you some advice. Always choose the busier path; there are more interesting things to be found there. But choose the quieter path if you want your coffee to be warm when you get back to your desk.
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