It doesn’t matter where it is, every Starbucks appears to have a policy whereby they clearly have two tills, and a lot of staff, and yet no one is ever on the second till. The queue gets longer and longer as the one member of staff who’s been handed the till short straw appears to use the covert tactics of reducing waiting times by being as lackadaisical as possible. Occasionally dealing with customers, he seems more intent on checking his overly angled hair is still in correct proportions and staring into space in the hope that maybe the world will focus and he will realise that this is all some sort of horrible dream rather than a terrifying reality where he must spend everyday inhaling the smells of caffeine while saying words like ‘venti’ instead of just ‘large’ like a proper dick. Occasionally other members of staff appear, inbetween carrying trays with one bit of rubbish on, so that they can go back to the same table six times under the guise of health and safety probably, picking up one piece everytime and therefore avoid actually working. These coffee wombles glance at the other till on passing and then are quickly warned off it as though its showing a picture of a scary man and the words ‘if you touch this till I will find you and punch you’. It amazes me how despite being surrounded by caffeine, everyone that spends too much time here are virtually asleep on their feet. I assume that maybe they have inhaled too much and are now on an extreme caffeine high, buzzing off their fairtrade Zimbabwean bean tits and listening to the not displeasing and yet never actually pleasing either, playlists involving far too much jazz flute and xylophone.
Today in Starbucks, I have seen my favourite thing of the day already. I am not yet hungover and I think this is partly due to still being drunk, so it’s entirely possible that none of you will find this at all amusing, or that I will even type it properly. I tend to find, especially with texts from the night before, that I remember sending friends the most hilarious of drunk witticisms, when in fact what I have sent is more along the lines of ‘haghamd akhdjahdu dog ashjahj boots! Ha f’. So, I shan’t build up to it too much incase this translates from ‘lovely moment’ to ‘garbled boredom’. The man in front of me in the queue was one of those people that would probably catch your eye, even if you weren’t sure why. Probably in his 40’s, dressed in a hoodie and trousers and with completely white hair, there was nothing about him that seemed completely out of the normal. Yet his face was in a permanent fixture of slight discomfort. His upper lip gnarled as though it was trying to dive up his nostrils to seek warmth and his eyes squinting in a manner that suggested his brow was trying to make them give up and let him sleep again. He approached the till and shouted his order in a very broad Geordie accent. Really shouted. ‘A GRANDY MOCHY LARTAY PLEASE’. The man at the till barely flinched, and instead very slowly input this in the till and then somewhere over the next few minutes, decided to let one of the others know about this as though it might actually be useful in order for the product to be delivered. Then, this is the bit I enjoyed the most, the man at the till asked for the money, and shouty man just remained gnarly lipped and furrow browed. ‘HOW MUCH IS IT MATE?’ he shouted. The till man paused, and then very slowly told him again. Once more shouty man said ‘HOW MUCH IS IT MATE?’ at an increasingly unnecessary volume. ‘£2.45’ the till man said, still as uncaring as before. Shouty man looked even more confused than before, and switch his glances between till man, the till and a very large amount of change he had in his hand. His eyes darted back and forth about 6 or 7 times before he started to count all the change bit by bit. About four 20p pieces in, he just sighed, took all the change, and said ‘YOU COUNT IT. YOU TELL ME IF AH HAVE ENOOF.’ before putting all of it into till man’s hands. It was such an incredible display of defeat.
I can only imagine that if this man gives up on such tiny things that take such an incredibly small amount of time, that he really has given up on life. Either that, or he is just brilliant at being lazy. I hope its the latter as I’d find it far more pleasing. Imagining he sits at the dinner table, picks up his fork before throwing it down and demanding others feed him. Whenever he walks somewhere, he takes two or three steps before just toppling over and lying there until someone picks him up and carries him. I have sat on the other side of the cafe from him, in order to not ruin this possibility. There, hope that wasn’t too garbled or dull, and if it was, I’m hugely sorry. Well, not hugely. Or really that sorry. I’m just still evidently a bit of a mess. It feels like a well deserved mess as after an entire day of worrying about last night’s gig at the Hyena, it was a really fun gig. Its a shame in a way as I’d had a really nice day wondering around Toon with my friends Rachel and Adam, visiting odd scary art at the Baltic and generally moseying around, all the while making them miserable about the possibility of the gig being a bear pit. There’s nothing like showing someone around your home town when all they do is growl with eyes of fear and hate at every large group of men or woman that walk past incase their evening happens to involve comedy. Poor poor them. I fear I’ve put them off being tour guides forever. Which isn’t a bad thing.
The room was mostly men, and not only that, but men in stag dos which, along with rugby teams, is the worst sort of group of men. There’s something about that much testosterone in a group that means its only possible to behave as animalistically as possible, spending equal amounts of time growling, fighting and trying to fuck anything that moves. But despite this, I had a great time. I was very much anti-Tiernan, loud, more offensive than normal, and I even changed one of my jokes so it included the word ‘blowjob’, instead of ‘man on the bus that looked like a wolf’. And they liked it. And they didn’t heckle. Much. But at least it didn’t involve throwing things at me, or trying to punch me. So, whilst no one’s intellectual bar was raised, neither was anyone hit by a bar or thrown into the bar or any other such violent activities with bars. So top marks all round.
Today it happens again, and I’m sure I’ve jinxed myself by saying I enjoyed last night. Today will no doubt involve something going wrong. If it does, I’ve got a good mind to just hand them some jokes on bits of paper and say ‘YOU DO IT’ before just toppling over and lying there till someone picks up me up and carries me home.
