Ugly chicks

A funny side-effect of this job is the alteration of the way you're perceived to people's eyes. This is probably the only environment I can think of where ugly girls like the many that visit my store every day would ever talk or relate to me the way they do. This doesn't happen very often thu but when it does it's a very comic situation.
I'm too tired to write about it at the moment so, it's kind of a memo for me...but hey fattie, you know that I would never talk to a girl like you in a normal life situation, so enjoy your moment of glory but remember that you gave us all a really good reason to laugh about you!!

Ol' boat sinking

Going through the main newspapers first pages you've possibly sensed a certain, pessimistic vibe coming out of the current financial analisyses. You certainly have read about the american big shots discouraging investments in England. That's why they deem this country condemned to some kind of Iceland-like bankrupt, a spiral that will swallow the entire public finances and us in it too.
Of all the european countries, England seems to face the worst degree of economic downfall.

I happened to think a lot about this lately and I really wanted to take a picture of my store today. It epitomises the spirit of these days: tables full of Johns dawdling along, sipping tall cups of coffee having their morning business meetings.
Business meeting in a coffee shop? (If you ask it's probably because you're a reader from another country. If you don't it's because your name is probably John)
Yes!!
Now you tell me where else in the world someone could have the ability of having a business meeting in a public space? In which country someone would be able to ignore the chatting, the noise, the walking, the clinging of cups, the ringing of phones, and carry on indifferently talking about the job?
I wanted to take a picture every half an hour and send them to some whatever newspaper and ask if are all these suits taking their jobs seriously? Or do they just give it for granted?Are the tasks they've been put in charge of suitable to their professionality?

We can complain about Gordon Brown's policy and measures to face the crisis all day long but if we don't understand that the engine that keeps the country going is the individual effort of any single person we're all well doomed to recession for a long time.

If these are the minds that have to take us out of the chasm........

Drink up your coffee fast and go back to work or I'll call your boss to come over and kick your ass!!

Changing subject: one John has been rude to one member of the staff today. I heard him mumbling with a mucus voice his disappointement about the coffee not being ready in 5 seconds but in 10.
It was a drink in. And he stayed in the house for one hour and half.
He was a pure breed John. He had nothing important to do of course (maybe a business meeting....in the coffee shop).
He was with another John dressed exactly like him.....looking exactly like him.

I was very admired to the barista for keeping it in his chest.
I went by the counter to mediate the situation but as soon as I got there I realised that it wasn't worth the waste of words.
I felt so sad for the customer.
He looked so pathetic, this mid-40 John in his average suit. A bald fat ugly man with puffy red cheecks and horrible skin feeling so important telling off a barista who's trained to not speak back in this situations.
You should have seen the smile on his face when he left the counter. He thought he'd been very brave and probably he bragged about it at the table.

Needless to say we spent the next hour calling him names. I came up with the most offensive one: I called him Silvio Berlusconi.

identify, please!

How worse could a day kick off when the first two orders are: one shot decaf cappuccino and soya cappuccino with cinnamon on top??!!
I always thought that a cappuccino is a cappuccino, a name to identify a specific drink. You just walk in a bar and ask for this drink. When you get it "here's your cappuccino"..... no buts.
Until I came to live here in London.

First of all: decaf is not even coffee. It doesn't wake you up because, well it's decaf; you get it, right?
- ok, you don't need something to boost you up so you just want a coffee-based drink. So, why one shot instead of two?
- you don't want it too strong? why worry? it's decaf!!!!
- you don't like the taste of it? why u drink it then?
- ok, ok, I got it! with two shots you can taste the coffee too much and it's too bitter for you: so why don't you drink a latte that contains more milk?
But, more important who's forcing you to go in a coffee shop and ask 4 your weird drink? social convention maybe? Is it John?

Sunday

I always hated sundays. Since I was a kid: When the morning wake up call meant that I had to sit through the mass at the church. A 154 years old priest rasping about the glory of friendship in Jesus while I was bullied by some shitbags who were slapping me in the neck from behind.

They had this great idea to have all the kids sitting all together at the most extreme end of this sacro loco. The farest possible from the pulpit. Almost with geometric precision.

So there we all were. And so they were, little Satans in disguise that instead of sitting on the celebration kept themselves busy torturing us, little sheeps.
Another problem, I was filed under 'gay geek' (although I wasn't but apparently I looked like) which made me one favourite target to play with, a sitting duck to their evil happy-making hobby.

So, I'm a really nice boy, I'm all smiles for everyone and I've never beaten neither a person nor an animal in my life. But I do hate people and I learned that very soon!!

And I think I do have a fucking reason for that!

Also, because I've been judged by the way I looked I decided to not have my hate filtered through. It means that I'm not racist at all; according to my feelings there's no primary determinant on the way I direct my anger. I hate people no matter what's their skin, religious belief, country, sex or favourite football team. I hate all of them, exactly the same way.

Back to sundays: the afternoon was even worse. Spend the rest of the day thinking that you're gonna be fucked by your teachers big time because you've not been smart enough to use friday afternoon, the whole saturday and that bit of morning to finish the huge mole of homeworks you've been given for the weekend.

That day is always been a puchbag for my laziness.

Like today, I was supposed to square my room away.......

Anyway since then as soon as I wake up I have my saturday night high spirit beaten out of me. Clearly now that I'm a 'gnown-up' I suffer the consequences of heavy drinking nights out but honestly what's so good in a day that you don't even know if 's the end or the beginning of the week?

I never understood that.

And it really flips me out!!!

Wether it's the begininng or not sunday means that tomorrow you're back to work.
I work in a coffee shop. That's the worst job human mind could think of. Really!!
You see, there's a really strange relationship between the citizens of London (where I live) and the culture of the cup of coffee. Something that is out of the radar of normality, something that I've never seen somewhere else in the world.
It's a funny and sometimes scary relationship and that can really divide people into categories and styles.

It's a two side game played by the customers and the companies. A game where you don't know who's the cat and who's the mouse anymore.
It's a job that makes your day an odissey and turn you into a sort of drug-dealer and that's how our usuals see me. When they don't have money with them (sorry, I thought I had some cash with me!!!) I give them the coffee "you can pay tomorrow". I know they need their dose right there, right now and I give it to them anyway.

I'm not supposed to do it. But a good dealer knows his users.

It's about this world that I want to talk to you of. A world that you think you know, because you spend a lot of your time in there but there's much more behind it.....