In this collection of short stories, a reluctant member of a coffee klatch ponders life's ironies.
From the book:
UnCoffee
You may recall I’ve somehow been conscripted into a local coffee klatch. I say “conscripted” because I never intended to join the group, made up of Marcy, Alvin, Jeff and the late Joe.
True. I sometimes sat with them when they had their sessions at the local coffee house. Or rather, they started sitting with me. Someone assumed I was a willing participant rather than a random bystander.
I was going to say “innocent bystander”. But you know, bystanders are rarely innocent. Often guilty as hell. Some of them can hear the scrape of fender scraping paint off another fender at over 500 metres. And then they all gather round to gawk and gloat and gossip.
“Driver must have been drinking.”
“Really, but it’s only ten past nine in the morning. Is he a drunk?”
“Dunno. But he’d just come out of the coffee shop.”
Well, I say it’s more likely the ravages of a low-fat soymilk latte with an imperfectly installed plastic top that the driver was trying to juggle while starting to move in his new standard transmission sports car. If he’s unlucky, he has the triple penalty of new car damage, insurance payouts and unserviceable personal sports equipment due to hot liquid in lap.
But I’m off on a tangent here. I was going to tell you about the latest coffee klatch woes. Of course, there hadn’t been any meet-ups for a while with the pandemic lock-down, but recent changes in regulations allow the coffee shop to have a couple of tables open, and it helps that the front of the shop has an old glass garage door, so it can be opened up. I got an email from Alvin saying they’d meet at the coffee shop at the usual time. There was a silent command that I was to get there early to grab “our” table. However, I chose not to reply. I don’t mind the assumption that I’m an unofficial group member, but it’s a bit over the top to impose work duty.
I did, however, decide to be a bystander, as I had been past the coffee shop and knew Marcy’s “spot” was one of the tables blocked off from use to provide appropriate physical distancing. The new mask regulation meant actually drinking or eating would be difficult too. The public health authorities should have had a year’s training in improv comedy so they could get their act together for writing coherent regulations more quickly.
It was easy for me to lurk in the park across from the coffee shop. There was a bench – we’re allowed to sit on them now, unlike a month or so ago – that was partly hidden by bushes. I took my book and was reading and keeping an eye out for the arrival of the group members.
Alvin got there first, with Jeff just a minute behind. They stood about indecisively, then Jeff sat at a table for 3 near the open front while Alvin went to the counter. He was just getting his order when Marcy showed up. I could lip-read
“They’ve blocked off my spot!”
This was clearly followed by some grumbling and general complaining. Then Marcy clearly said something about there only being three chairs. And you weren’t supposed to move chairs around. That was part of the new regulations. Marcy was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to sit with them. So they all got up and moved to a table at the back which had 4 chairs, all well-spaced.
I was starting to get thirsty. And the barista in this coffee house does a latte just how I like it. With the lock-down, I was a bit concerned that they would have trouble staying in business, so I put a chunk of money on account and arranged that I’d phone in an order – always a latte extra hot and no foam and a chocolate croissant. Before they were allowed to have tables, they’d modified the counter a bit and set up a small hatch to deliver take-out to the side-walk. And one day it wasn’t too busy and the barista – Jenny – saw me on the bench and before I could get to the take-out window, she’d brought it across. Great service. I told her to take a buck a time out of my balance and to let me know when I got below twenty bucks.
And today she spotted me after I phoned my order in. So Jenny brought me my order, and I saw Marcy get up and come to the front of the shop to see where Jenny was going. I could see steam coming out of Marcy’s ears.
I waved. Then I thanked Jenny and sat to enjoy my croissant and coffee.
Pencils
Pencils – and here I mean the traditional ones which we say have a “lead” – are pretty important for some writers and artists. Me, I like having them around, but I can’t say I’m a big user. More a collector. I’ve a box of several hundred of them, and my wife is always after me to throw them out.
“You’re never going to use them! That whole shoebox is full of them.”
“OK. I’ll throw them out if you toss those three steamer trunks of sewing material you have in the guest room.”
“Never! I might need that to make an outfit or some new curtains.”
And my pencils are safe.
When I was a kid, workers of all types always had a pencil either in their pocket or perched above their ear. And they’d use a pocket knife to sharpen them. Apparently, some wartime bureaucrat avoiding front-line military service worked out that rotary sharpeners wasted 20% more pencil than a pen-knife. Odd that. Using a pen-knife to sharpen a pencil. I think it came from when quills were used as pens. Had to keep refreshing the writing end as it got damaged.
And folk would lick the tip of the pencil to make it write darker. Don’t know if that worked. Teacher would yell, “Nicholas Smith! Stop sucking that pencil. Don’t you know that lead is poisonous?”
But of course it wasn’t – isn’t. It’s just graphite and clay. Probably not a great thing to ingest, but not going to kill you. Now when I was a kid, there were some other kids who did get sick, but they chewed the barrel of the pencil and got lead poisoning from the paint.
It was, however, a big deal to have a propelling pencil. These were the old design of mechanical pencil where you turned the top in a torsive movement to move the lead – the needle of graphite and clay – forward. When you exhausted one you had to slip in another and twist it all the way back. The modern clutch type mechanical pencils are way easier to use.
Naturally, you need to have the right size leads. My solution was to have lots of packets of different sizes and they’re all in the shoebox too. Sometimes I dig out a pencil or two with serious intent of using them. Maybe a special thick carpenter’s one with the oblong cross-section so they don’t roll when you set them down. I even have a special sharpener for those. So I get all set up, then I end up at the other end of the house and use a cheap ball-point pen for carpentry instead.
Doesn’t matter. I enjoy having my collection. It doesn’t take up much space, and maybe one day the steamer trunks will get moved out so I can set up a model railroad in the guest room.
