Earring aid

She's one of the incoming summer wave of new baristas at my coffee shop.  She's very young, and statuesque -- and she likes my earrings, which are creamy ovals with lavender cloisonné flowers at the centres.

I tell her my mother bought me a pair years ago, and I loved them so much that they fell apart, and after my mother died, I silently asked her permission, and squirrelled her slightly different variation of the earrings away, wearing them to her memorial service for good luck.

I must have made an impression, because 90 minutes later, when I'm dropping off my coffee cup at the rear sink, she asks my name, and in return, I ask her hers.  It's Tamsin, though she has to repeat it -- I fancy I hear the narrowed vowels of a New Zealand accent, which somehow remind me of cone-shaped tubes.

"Tamsin!" I exclaim.  "That's the female form of Thomas!  I've always liked that name!"

She tells me her sister had a room-mate named Thompson.

"Tamsin and Thompson?  How confusing for your sister!"  I hastily add:  "She probably recognised you, though!" 

It's probably time for me to go.

I'm pretty sure the staff is encouraged to address regulars by name, but I feel seen all the same.  It's rather nice.

A matter of gravity

There's an odd role-poly young woman who's been showing up at the coffee-house periodically.

She drags her wheelie-bag everywhere, as she fetches things:  her coffee, her breakfast, her napkins.  Back and forth, the wheels rumbling behind her.

Today, she approaches me to ask if I'll make sure that "nobody touches" her things while she's in the washroom, a few steps away.  I guess pulling the thing to the toilet crosses some sort of line.

"If they try, I'll body-tackle them," I assure her gravely.

She accepts this with equal gravity. 

Being seen

I may have mentioned that, as I navigated my way around during my seventeen long years in Hades, strangers rarely addressed me.  

This was probably due to two factors:  1) Ontarians are a bit on the reserved side; 2) I was female and over forty.  I noticed, with some amusement, that, when I was walking somewhere with either daughter,  men, particularly fellows of my vintage or older, would approach and ask directions of my daughter, rather like I wasn't there.

As I've also mentioned, people in Victoria do talk to me, even young men, who, on the whole, greet me cordially. It's not deep, but it's pleasant.  I feel visible again.

When I go to the coffee shop, I'm still visible, but, because I have journals and pens spread across the table, I'm rarely approached.  I'm occasionally asked if I'm a writer, and I issue a brief and (I hope) polite denial, knowing that there are actual writers within hearing.

I arrive fairly early in the morning, when most of the clientele are male.  They enjoy calling pleasantries and questions to the baristas. The young women respond warmly, never letting on that most of these fellows are the same age as their fathers and grandfathers.  It's harmless.

Over to my left, three Billy Connolly clones are gathered around a table, chatting amiably about tools and rat infestations - a hazard of living in Victoria. None of them have Scottish accents.

The real Billy Connolly

Across the way, a young fellow with a beard is interacting with his laptop, a Bluetooth glowing in his ear, luckily for us -- and him. I think people who watch sports, television programmes, or gawd help us, music videos without earbuds in coffee shops should be strung up.  Or do you think I'm being too harsh?

Tight in a corner, a middle-aged guy is talking to a woman.  It might be a date, or a meeting.  He's describing his career, using words like "passionate" and "balance" which seem to be the early 21's century's versions of "meaningful".  She's not saying much.  To give him his due, he does ask her the occasional question.

Over to my right, a stranger clad in a woollen poncho greets me cheerily and volubly, somewhat to my confusion.  (This never happened in Hades: the greeting from a stranger - especially to a non-youthful non-barista - or the poncho.)  He's from Saltspring Island, which I could have guessed. It turns out the reason he's calling over to me if that he thought he heard me tell the staff that I'm from Saltspring.

'I don't think so," I tell him.  "Because I'm not!"

He thinks this is funny.  Very chatty.  Very Saltpringy.  He's feeling homesick, he says.

I tell him about my husband's birthday, and he says it makes him happy when older people celebrate birthdays, "because they've worked harder for it".  He could take a page from the baristas' diplomatic code, but I take no offence when none is intended.  

"It's actually pretty simple," I smile.  "You don't die."

He thinks that's pretty funny, too.  Give him time.

Pest control

 

It's Tuesday, so there's a large infestation of cyclists on the patio of the coffee house.

My favourite table is available indoors, facing the window, which, for pandemic protocol reasons, is flung wide open all year round for ventilation, so I can hearing the bellowing fellowship outside, about a dozen feet away.  I take my seat philosophically.  They won't be there long.

As the group disperses, a bellowing fellow, having stood up, looks in the window as I happen to glance up.  I calmly avert my gaze, and resume my perusal of the journals on my table.  

I hear him muttering, but there's a mischievous edge to it.  I look up to see his head and shoulders silhouetted in the window, but I can make out the sly grin on his face.

I shake my head, and cheerfully thumb my nose at him.

The shop-owner is on counter-duty this morning, and is making her rounds, disinfecting the tables (another pandemic protocol).  

I barely resist the urge to tell her to squirt him.

Standing room only

For the first time in months, I shiver slightly, and battling my surprise, pull on my fleece jacket.  It's not even Labour Day yet.

I find myself remembering a very chilly morning in late January.  

A lady was standing by the coffee-house window counter, gazing out at the winter drizzle, as I set up my journals at my accustomed table, idly wondering why she'd chosen a spot within six feet of the tables.  

In those mid-pandemic days, the stools had been taken away from the raised counter, because they didn't work well with social distancing, nor with the constant sanitizing then required.  Still, if she wanted to stand at a counter, there was an identical one on the southern side, where, from May 2020 to May 2021, there were no tables at all.

I decided to ignore her, and strolled to the bar to pick up my mocha, and as I was setting it on my table, preparing to take my seat, one of the young baristas approached the lady and gently asked her to move.  She offered her a nearby table, saying something about the need to sanitize.

In response, the standing-room-only lady stalked out.  Clutching her coffee and sandwich, she glared back into the window that faced my table.  I gazed steadily back; she was clearly muttering about the injustice and embarrassment.

I then wondered if she thought I summoned the barista.

Rich in irony (and full of vitamins)

 

During the past year, I've come to see the resemblance between cyclists and wasps. 

I'm not talking about the commuting kind, or those out for a Sunday ride; I mean the jock kind. 

 Our local coffee shop is prone to morning infestations of cycling enthusiasts. They're usually clad in yellow and black; they have hard helmeted heads; they tend to swarm; they buzz -- and they're rather annoying, to be honest. 

During the three months or so when indoor dining was forbidden in British Columbia for what the provincial government called a COVID "circuit-breaker", I found myself huddling in the morning chill at the outside tables, and forced to share space with the wheeler-dealers, who clustered on the patio and talked "jockularly" about their equipment and injuries. 

Once, a couple cautiously mounted the front steps and half-whispered to me: "Have the cyclists gone?"

 "Well, it's Monday," I replied, cheerfully. "They usually turn up on Tuesdays and Fridays." 

"They're just so loud..." they said, in a normal volume, and went to get their coffees.

Particularly galling aspects of sharing space with jock cyclists during a pandemic: a) being athletic, they think they're immune, and hence not likely to social distance; b) if they do practise social distancing, it's only with each other.  I had the opportunity to observe this latter phenomenon several times during the "circuit-breaker".

For example:  One morning, the patio was thoroughly "infested" when I arrived, so I strategically selected a table equidistant from a large cluster of cyclists socializing in the road-side blocks of seating, which have become endemic during the pandemic.  

A forty-or-fifty-something lady with a short blond ponytail poking out of her helmet called out to a gentleman sitting at the crowded table.  He rose, approached her, and they settled on an appropriate distance between them for a prolonged chat, calling over the space between them. Neither of them noticed that they were standing right next to my seat.  Apparently, I didn't count.

I got up, and changed chairs, putting my table between us. This also escaped their notice.

I wasn't listening in to their conversation, but they were socially distanced (from each other, at least), and they were cyclists (and hence, loud), so I did hear some of what they said. At one point, they were discussing a mutual acquaintance who - and here there was some grasping for the correct phrase - "needs something in the way of social graces".  I bit my lip, busying myself with my journals.  It's not often I get such an irony-rich experience.

After more than ten minutes of this long-distance call, Blond Pony Tail bid farewell, and circulated some more, finally riding off with a gal-pal -- on the sidewalk, of course.  I could hear her gears:  clique-clique-clique-clique...

With the relaxation of restrictions, I can now enjoy my mocha and danish indoors, with a nice wall separating me from the wasps.  I can still hear them, but it's more of a comforting buzz.  Winter, alas, will likely bring them indoors.

Spaced out

A week ago, at 9:30 am, my favourite coffee house was packed.

To the right of the entrance, a ring of about fifteen older people clustered around a tiny table.

They kept coming to my favourite side of the coffee house to purloin chairs, as more and more of them arrived. I put my coat on the floor to accommodate them, and thought grumpily about the two old ladies seated at my favourite table, in my favoured chairs (the old rounded ones that don't cripple me) gazing at their phones, before finally getting down to chatting with each other.

I rather missed them this morning. A week later, and half the tables had been taken off the patio, so that those who did dare to stay to drink their coffee from cardboard cups (no china cups or plates allowed today) would be able to sit the prescribed six feet apart.

I dared to stay, taking a table in the wrong end of the coffee shop, having lifted down one of the older and more comfortable chairs from the stack on the bench, where, up until yesterday, the laptop users perched next to the power outlets. I was not quite six feet from the man to my right, but he was on a stool by the window ledge, facing away from me, so I imagine I was safe enough.

I made out my bullet journal, setting up April. One goal for that month: "Survive". Couldn't face making any others. I wrote in the dates and days, as you do with a bullet journal, something about the process, I guess. I wrote in Easter, and wondered how Easter will be with all the churches closed, and then I remembered the Resident Fan Boy plans to be out of town for my birthday - provided travel is possible. To my astonishment, my eyes welled with tears. I put them away.

As I left the proprietor wiped down my table with disinfectant and thanked me for coming.

Something that is

The eye is round and rather a bright blue.

It belongs to a large, older man who is seated in one of the armchairs at the edge of the coffee shop. He's holding a Times-Colonist up close to his face, and is clearly not reading it, because his left eye is peering around the side edge of the newspaper, and it's fixed on me, as I arrange the chair, and place my journals across the table I intend to use. Two or three times, I gaze back at him, keeping my face neutral. The eye does not blink.

I go get my coffee.

I ignore him for the rest of the morning.

Left-leaning line troll

On a glorious spring morning (rather a lot of those in Victoria -- just sayin'), I'm in line at my favourite coffeehouse, behind an elderly bearded fellow, who is leaning, a tad precariously, on his cane.

He turns to me and growls, "This place has become too crowded."
"It's not so bad on weekdays," I respond with a patient smile.
"Yes, it is!" he glares.
"At this time of day, it isn't," I reply mildly. I have my eye on my favourite cherry-yoghurt Danishes. They're not in every morning, and there's only two of them left this Sunday morning.

Growly glaring cane man seems to have conceded my last point, but has now entered into a rather strange diatribe about "the left-leaning communist types" who frequent the place.
"I thought it was running and cycling clubs," I deadpan.
"Same thing. You should go to Oak Bay. You don't want to be mistaken for one of them."

"I frequently am!" I laugh, assuming he's referring to the left-leaning communist types, and not the cycling clubbers, who seem to consist mainly of sixty-and-seventy-something males, who tend to stand back while waiting for their coffee-orders, with their skinny butts in the faces of those sitting at the surrounding tables.

Before the growler can resume, I deftly direct his attention to the waiting barista.

There are online trolls, and there are line trolls. I know the latter when I see one.

Besides, one of those cycling types had held the door open for me, and I'm feeling charitable.