Long blacks with milk froth and hipsters with bling, these are a few of Pete’s favourite things!
Pete every Sunday morning I’m woken by cyclists yelling at each other. I always figured it was some kind of neighbourhood peloton road rage, until last Sunday when I was up early grabbing the paper off the lawn and realised they weren’t yelling, they were talking! But they were only one meter apart – so what’s all this racket for?
Steve, Seddon (via Facebook)
Steve if you had seen the cycling awareness campaign, “A metre matters” then you’d know that ensuring that cyclists are a metre apart at any given time is important to society’s well-being. In the past, cyclists were more than a metre apart you see, so they had to REALLY SHOUT at each other to be heard. You being woken up on Sunday mornings? The mere sound of butterfly wings my friend. Back in my day cyclists sounded like the thunder clap of an elephant stampede that left your ears bleeding!
Pete the other day I was in my favourite little cafe when a mother and son came in. He to order probably the best coffee in Sunshine, she to sit and drink the coffee she had brought in from a crappy chain cafe down the street. Odd behaviour at best, rude at worst – or am I being to sensitive?
Jackie, Sunshine West (via email)
Jackie you certainly are not being too sensitive. You are being too nosey! Seriously though, unless you are playing out some sort of coffee super-hero-vigilante type role, what do you care? You neither have to drink the crappy coffee, nor feel the loss of a $3.80 customer purchase. Now if it was a steak sandwich she had brought in, that would be odd. A Chiko Roll? That would be just plain insulting, especially if they didn’t sell them. Or maybe that’s the key. Maybe you’ve tapped into some sort of primal, communal purpose that will make our society better. This could work like the French model. It’s not necessarily noble, it just works because they let people specialise. Why make great pastries and crappy coffee if the place next door does great coffee and will let you bring your pastries in from elsewhere? Pfft, nah let’s face it, we know its because they just cant be stuffed making coffee – crappy or otherwise! Jackie just go back to being outraged – it’s easier to process!
Pete I know this will seems trivial. I like a sweet treat at morning tea time, but I don’t go in for all those fancy doughnuts or Portuguese tarts, I just like a good old-school coffee scroll. But the few places around here you can get them these days always seem to pre-smear them with margarine – a pet hate of mine. Pies don’t come pre-sauced, cappuccinos don’t automatically come with sugar, so why have places got this margarine obsession?
Paul, Kingsville South (via email)
Hmm. Firstly Paul, there is NOTHING trivial about morning tea! The most important meal of the day my friend. If I don’t suck down a custard square or neenish tart by 11am, and wash it down with a Nescafe Blend 43, I remain non-compos-mentis, which for the coffee-scroll eating minority out there, basically means I don’t have my shit together. Aah but Paul you are lucky, because on this particular day I HAVE had my fill of ye-olde-treats, and am ready to solve your problem! Oh wait, nope, they’re telling me I’ve just ran out of room on the page, so good luck with that, hope you get it solved!
