What happened in the cafe

She works in my local cafe. She’s beautiful, sweet and friendly. I wonder would she ever go for me? I go to the cafe as much to see her as for the lovely smoky fresh coffee. Maybe if I talk to her while I’m making my order she will notice me. Maybe we could go on a date. But how do I make the transition from being a patron of the cafe to being of personal interest to her?

I put on my best jeans, a cool floral shirt too. I spray a little of the Hugo Boss on. The ad says that it drives women crazy. That might help me out. I’m a bald man so I put on my linen flat cap to cover it up. Women say they don’t care about men being bald but I know that’s not true. I read an opinion piece recently where the female author wrote about baldness in a way that suggested it was ugly. So that has stuck with me.

I look at myself in the mirror. I rub my hands over my head to make sure my ‘hair’ is in place, out of habit. I fix my flat cap.

The air is cold outside so I walk briskly to the cafe. When I open the door I catch a glimpse of blond hair behind the counter. She is working today so. There is no one else in the queue so I walk as nonchalantly as I can up to the front. She looks busy. It’s almost lunchtime. She’s under pressure.

“Hi, how are you,” I profer, with a smile.

“Hey, good to see you again!,” she says.

It was cold outside but it seems to be very warm in the cafe. The edges of my glasses are gathering moisture.

“Will you have a coffee?” she asks.

“Yeah that would be great, thanks. How are things?”

My glasses are now almost totally fogged up but I don’t want to take them off because I don’t like the way I look without them.

“Are you alright there,” she says.

“Oh yeah, grand. I can still see shapes”.

“Good, good,” she giggles. “You take milk, don’t you?”

“Milk would be great, thanks”.

What is she doing? She’s going to pour the milk in herself. This is one of my pet peeves. Why would anyone pour the milk in for you? The milk to coffee balance is imperative to a successful Americano. I reach out to stop her but there are no words coming to me. I can’t be that guy.

I can see her pouring bucket loads of milk into my coffee, a  whole cow’s worth squeezed into my cup, destroying it forever.

“Is that enough milk?” she says.

(What you have just done has ruined my day)

“That’s perfect, thanks,” I say. “Any other news?” I ask, not that the conversation has been filled with news up to this point.

I’m now holding the scalding cup of coffee. The steam from the cup is rising and adding to the woes of my glasses. They have reached saturation point. Drips of moisture are falling from the frame back into the cup of coffee, creating a weather cycle. A separate ecosystem has developed between us.

“I’m moving to New York next week. I’ve finally secured a job over there so I’m really excited about that,” she says.

I can’t say anything. I try. But I can’t.

“Sorry, I have to clear up that table over there. But it was great to see you. Catch you soon”.

I take off my glasses and mop them down with my cool floral shirt. And I leave.

The Falling - review

The Falling is a new film set in an English girls’ school in the 1960s. Directed by Carol Morley, the story is dreamlike, ethereal and at times engrossing. Ultimately, its loss of connection with reality becomes its undoing.

The film concerns an epidemic of fainting among the girls that appears to have no medical foundation. Highly reminiscent of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, the story also borrows that film’s otherworldly atmosphere.

Lydia (Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams) and Abigail (newcomer Florence Pugh) are best friends and the most influential girls within their peer group. Their sexual awakening threatens their pastoral innocence and the unexplained collective fainting or ‘falling’ becomes a metaphor for the disintegration of their childhood.

I particularly like stories set within school and college campuses. Books such as The Secret History and films such as Damsels in Distress are successful because their plots remain tethered to real experiences that the audience can relate to and remember from their own lives. In this way schools and college campuses are ideal settings in which to place a story. This is true also of The Falling, up to a point. When the film becomes more interested in projecting its sense of metaphor rather than remaining true to real life, the audience ceases to be connected to the characters or to care about their fate. That is this film’s undoing. There is no resolution as to why the epidemic of fainting occurs. The characters begin to continually make choices which beggar belief and we lose touch with any real world connection.

The film features an excellent original soundtrack by Tracey Thorn (Everything But the Girl).

Three stars.

Why are we obsessed with politicians eating food?

If you Google ‘Ed Miliband eating’ you’ll be presented with countless images of the politician awkwardly eating a variety of different foods. The man can’t unfold a napkin without being snapped. I have been struck over the past couple of weeks, since the election campaign kicked off, by the British media’s unsettling fascination with the ways in which its leaders eat food. Eating in front of other people makes one vulnerable at the best of times, without the knowledge that your face full of bacon sandwich will be plastered across every paper the following day. Apparently how we eat determines our suitability for leadership.

Only yesterday, on day two of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, the Guardian carried the headline ‘Hilary’s Flawless Chipotle Choice’. The article included graphic, up-close images of the Democrat chowing down on a Mexican tortilla. She managed the affair with alot more grace that I could summon. I don’t like anyone regarding me when I eat because I lack the elegance to make it a pleasant experience for the person watching me. However, if you are a politician, you must be ready to manoeuvre the trickiest of foods into one’s mouth, while appearing interested and concerned about the bacon sandwich vendor you have been thrust upon, who probably won’t even bother voting for you anyway. If I was a politician I wouldn’t eat in public. I would insist, like a Roman emperor, that my meals were brought to me so that I could consume them with gluttonous abandon within the dark confines of my campaign bus (or campaign chariot if I was a Roman emperor, I guess).

The way a politician eats has become competitive. Nick Clegg appeared on KBC Radio and was asked to do the ‘Ed Miliband Test’. He had to eat a bacon sandwich as the presenter decided whether or not he was better at it than his rival. Forget taxes, it’s party leaders’ ability to eat that counts.

David Cameron recently took on a hot dog, a brave choice for a politician eating in public. How he managed to get away with it while avoiding distasteful headlines about felatio is beyond me.

He was only eating the hotdog to gain some ‘man of the people’ kudos. Inside he was seething, no doubt. “Enough of this damn filth. How about some Eton Mess instead?  Bully! Bully!”

Food takes on enormous symbolism when a politician eats it, not just in the physical way. Peter Mandelson was once ridiculed for mistaking mushy peas for guacamole in a tour of a chipper. How out of touch he must be with the common diet of the common man!

George Osborne, in a bid to cast himself as just an ordinary bloke, tweeted a picture of the burger he was about to tuck into in the treasury. The hawkers were ready to lampoon him as it was a gourmet burger with a pricetag of over £6.50. The man must have no idea of the struggles the rest of us burger munching plebeians endure!

If I were a politician would I be coerced by my PR managers into eating bacon sandwiches every time I decided to eat out? No more olives, saucisson or tapenade for me? Because, apparently if you don’t eat anything like a burger, bacon sandwich or chipotle, then you are ‘out of touch’. Oh dear, I’ll leave it to others thank you.