I am 59 years old. I should be calm and placid.
Or dead.
Not so. I am fucking furious and fuming.
I have just read an article about the corporate thieves who sell what they call coffee to the world.
You know, Starbucks, Costa etc.
The ones who thieved the beauty of the Italian espresso bar back in the 80s and turned it into this grotesque global money-minting machine.
I cannot explain or describe how angry I feel. Certain things cause me, an already near-permanently angry old man, to overheat, almost to spasm.
The music for The Archers on Radio 4 is one such irritant. The words Starbucks, or their pronunciation of a type of coffee as "lah-tay" is another. Even worse is how scum-mongers such as Costa coffee have compounded the sins of the (initially well-meaning) Starbucks project.
They are all crooks, of course. How much do those horrible mugs of frothed hot milk and sugary additives really cost them? How much do they pay those poor girls and boys who look at you so blankly when you ask them if they can produce something a little stronger than usual? They just want to sell you a muffin.
I hate how Costa and Strabucks appear like a rash wherever there's a little disposable income. I hate how they have forever ruined two innocent colours - Costa red and Starbucks green.
I want more caffeine, I do not want some marshmallow-infested gloop with sweetie-pie hundreds and thousands floating on top!
I want fucking coffee! Is it too much to ask? Even at the South Mimms Service Station on the M25 where caffeine is surely a necessity and could be sold at a premium. No such thing. That liquid fudge you just sold me is not going to help me avoid that 16-wheel arctic that is about to srcunch my poor little Renault to nothing.
Blah!
Spinning happily at thirty-three-and-a-third revolutions per minute, not wanting to stop
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Saturday, 6 October 2012
Saturday 6 October year of satan numero 12
I have these unlinked thoughts on this day when the BBC is due to re-broadcast the Magical mystery Tour I watched with such adoring fascination 45 years ago.
These thought-dream ideas are so evanescent, they are the flames burning off the edges of other flames. I had it then, 10 minutes back, now it has gone.
The cellar-bound, the basement man. An old man with his books. Not his books, their books, and upstairs the fragrant Kensington folk, the less fragrant Portobello men with their bad teeth, their antique-dealer shrugs, their nicotine skin.
Above all, E. She could've been that skinhead girl back in 1968 with high-waisted blue jeans with big turn-ups (big as turnips and just as white) above the dm boot top, the braces and the rusty buzz cut, the blank eyed glare as she dodged between the gorilla-male skins around bethnal green, spitting venom at the little suburban hippies making their way to victoria park for some ill-advised peace and poetry event.
Now she's 70-ish, makes tea, her late hub was a printer at new printing house square, lost job when murdoch moved them, was a wapping picket, died later, sons are taxi-drivers, grand-daughter is already doing the knowledge.
You get the score. She's a character out of the screenplay I never wrote for Bridget in 1989. A true rough diamond geezer-essa, a riot-grrll 50 years ahead of her time.
Then there's D, a barmaid type, must've been so pretty once, now - as so often with these big beautiful blousy blonde types, she's widened out and hardened, she's becoming furniture, a bow leg at each corner to support the substantial corpus.
Of any interest or not, none of this was what I wanted to write tonight. I might instead write a love poem to Asda - its three for £10 wine deals keep me afloat.
These thought-dream ideas are so evanescent, they are the flames burning off the edges of other flames. I had it then, 10 minutes back, now it has gone.
The cellar-bound, the basement man. An old man with his books. Not his books, their books, and upstairs the fragrant Kensington folk, the less fragrant Portobello men with their bad teeth, their antique-dealer shrugs, their nicotine skin.
Above all, E. She could've been that skinhead girl back in 1968 with high-waisted blue jeans with big turn-ups (big as turnips and just as white) above the dm boot top, the braces and the rusty buzz cut, the blank eyed glare as she dodged between the gorilla-male skins around bethnal green, spitting venom at the little suburban hippies making their way to victoria park for some ill-advised peace and poetry event.
Now she's 70-ish, makes tea, her late hub was a printer at new printing house square, lost job when murdoch moved them, was a wapping picket, died later, sons are taxi-drivers, grand-daughter is already doing the knowledge.
You get the score. She's a character out of the screenplay I never wrote for Bridget in 1989. A true rough diamond geezer-essa, a riot-grrll 50 years ahead of her time.
Then there's D, a barmaid type, must've been so pretty once, now - as so often with these big beautiful blousy blonde types, she's widened out and hardened, she's becoming furniture, a bow leg at each corner to support the substantial corpus.
Of any interest or not, none of this was what I wanted to write tonight. I might instead write a love poem to Asda - its three for £10 wine deals keep me afloat.
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