The Coffee Bitch goes bi-lingual

As a general rule I try not to worry about things too much, but writing, and subsequently posting, this blog is worrying me. I think that I am worried that I am worried for selfish reasons inasmuch as if I don’t post then I have wasted a portion of my weekend. Now weekends are valuable to me as you can imagine, because 12 hour days in the shop plus 7 hours for sleep plus all the other little pieces of nausea leave very little weekday left. I truly hope that I am worried more because of the fact that this observation of the human condition requires a certain sensitivity, which is probably way beyond my reach. I think it might be best to post and let anyone who wants to comment be the arbiter of good taste.

During the quiet period between 10:00 and 11:00 I like to sit in the bay window and read either the Bigtown News or the Smalltown Gazette. You can probably imagine that the Smalltown Gazette does not have too much to report on and quite often the scoop on the front page is something like “Town resident celebrates 87th Birthday”. I only read it because

a) I feel obliged to support a local small business, after all they buy my coffee and
b) The Bigtown news is always “Gang Violence claims another 120 lives” or “ Meth baby births up by 500%”.

Quite frankly I find that stuff all rather depressing. Another reason to sit in the bay window is that I can watch the world go by, or not in this particular case. What attracted my attention this particular morning was the sight of a guy walking like a crab on PCP. Clearly he was hugely affected by cerebral palsy and I watched with a morbid fascination as he headed inevitably towards the door. Because I am (oddly enough) a decent egg I jumped up and got the door for him. He waltzed in looking for all the world like his legs were no longer speaking to each other, which in a way they weren’t. One was trying to head north whilst the other was heading west. His arms joined in this symphony of misfiring neurons and synapses by waving pointlessly at the ceiling. You could feel the concentration as he headed towards a chair and when he finally made it he did the most amazing thing. I can only describe it as if his brain told every muscle to shut down and he just collapsed. Cool.

Now I am not a letch but I do appreciate beautiful things. I have stood in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and adored Rembrant’s Nightwatch. I have carressed a Ferrari Testarossa and I have been in the company of more than my fair share of truly beautiful women. My point here is that I was so fascinated by the human land crab that I completely mised the fact that he was accompanied by a vision of perfection. She was exquisite in every way, her inner leg measurement must have been at least 48 inches and she had that glorious shade of honey blond hair that set off a flawless complexion. She was, in short, the sort of woman whom you would willing pay to drink her bathwater. As a slight aside have you noticed that many beautiful but insecure women have a plain friend? I guess this is just to ampify their own good looks and I call it the Paris / Nicole syndrome. Well this godess also had an ugly friend who plays no part in this tale so we will mention her no more. Having put my tongue back and wiped up a pint of drool from the front of my apron I ambled over to wait on them. This was going to be interesting.

I usually start by asking what people need to drink. Now I don’t mean to be cruel here, I really don’t but I can only call it like it was. This guy looked at me and said “Nnnnn naaah, nahnahnah, nnnnnnn aaarrrrrrr” Without making eye contact with anyone the love goddess said “He wants a Coke and I will have a blended harmless”.

I hope by now that you have realized I am the most forgiving and tolerant Coffee Bitch in the world however this severely irritated me. First of all the love goddess did not let the land crab finish his “sentence” and secondly no one tries to out pretence the Coffee Bitch when it comes to coffee. I know exactly what a harmless is and there is only room in this shop for one bitch. However we were still talking as I am sure I heard her say “Oh Coffee Bitch it’s soooo veiny”. (On reflection I may have been wrong on that call and to really understand this you need to rent the movie Waiting). So I get the sandwich order in and the drinks out, only to have the harmless come back because there was not enough ice in it. Now we are at war, no one does that to the Coffee Bitch and as a general rule you should never piss off people who handle your food. (Again see Waiting). So later I take out the land crab’s sandwich and as I depart I hear the Goddess say “Oh Johnny you are such a pig, why can’t you wait for us”. All right, from this moment on you are Johnny not land crab and she is Ho Pants not love Goddess.
The boss has, over the last few weeks, beaten it into me that I must always go back to the table and check that everything is alright, so reluctantly I went to check on Johnny and the Ho. Doing the normal insincere pleasantries Johnny looked up at me and said “Nnnnn, aaaaa ghghgh more coke”. Well you have no idea how thrilled I was, I actually understood Johnny. This was like having a second language and if you are going to have a second language perhaps Palsy isn’t too shabby. Certainly it is more useful that Serbo Croat. Allow me to explain.
I was “educated” in the slums of the east end of London. The law said that every student had to be taught a second language but the reality was far removed from the theory. Basically we were taught that all foreigners were supposed to speak English and if they didn’t understand you all you had to do was shout at them. Years, no decades, later I tried an evening school in German. The motivation was that I was working for a German company and thought sucking Teutonic arse might help my career. The demotivation was that they were the bastards that bombed my Granny during World War II. Anyway you can perhaps now understand how pleased I was with this unexpected turn up for the books. So just as Johnny was finishing his sentence Ho Pants said “He wants more ….” I stopped her in her tracks by holding up my hand and without making eye contact said “I got it”. Deep Joy. We fenced away during the rest of lunch and eventually Johnny said “I need a box for my sandwich” Of course the Ho tried to translate but I didn’t need that so the best insult I could throw was to walk away before she finished. I gave Johnny his box and rather cruelly said “You need to get a new girlfriend, this one is past her sell by date”. Johnny looked up at me and with the biggest smile ever said as clear as a bell “ She is not my girlfriend she is my sister”.
As you can imagine the afternoon went downhill after that and they soon departed. For some inexplicable reason Ho Pants failed to tip me out and that is what I call really ugly.

Epilog

Johnny if by some horrible mischance you read this, and recognize yourself, I sincerely hope that you don’t think I am taking the piss. The possibility of distressing you was the reason I agonized over blogging our afternoon. What I am trying to do, is somewhat in the theme of Shallow Hal, show how dignified you were and how ugly your sister was. This situation and pediatric oncology are just two of the reasons that the big guy upstairs and I don’t converse too much these days. Anyway here is a deal. Get the Ho to drive you to the shop and lunch is on me. Come during the quiet period (oh who am I kidding come anytime) and we can hang out. For desert I will plunge a bread knife into her lower cerebellum and we can watch her do the chicken dance as she bleeds out. What do you say? You know you want to.