i spend a lot of time loafing around in coffee shops, reading books. i am a relative latecomer to this type of activity. I don't have the studied air of a frenchman or a spaniard who are born and raised in coffee shops and treat them as an extension of their home.
i cannot help but have that pub mentality. i feel absolutely obliged to have a drink in front of me or i must remove myself from the establishment. i just can't brazen it out like our friends from the continent. i know most coffee shop workers could not care less whether i stay in there without a drink in front of me: the pressure comes from within.
i am sure that plenty of British people get this. we feel like our trip to the cafe is to do something specific, and when that is done, we feel terribly out of place remaining there.
Today, there i was in one of those blank Costa coffees, in Hornchurch, reading away. i had long finished my drink, and felt not the slightest anxiety about staying in out of the cold and reading. But the moment a polite waiter / barista fellow took my cup away, the pressure of being visibly without a purchased drink from the cafe was too great. Absolutely intolerable. And so out I went.
You might ask, reasonably, why not buy another cup? Two reasons. First, I am miserly; second, two cups of coffee sends me off into psychedelic brain meltdown territory and i start jabbering like a lunatic, often to myself. This is also something the contintental coffee drinking professional does not suffer from.
Cafe culture is now a part of life in England. But can we do the continental attitude? Not quite yet, i suspect.
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