Bean there, done that
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday January 18, 2014

For six years I have existed in a wasteland of sodden tea leaves and limp, spent teabags. Coffee and I parted ways over heart palpitations and the jitters. Even so, it was a bitter breakup: doctor’s orders.

At cafes, I now endure the taunts of coffee-drinking friends: “Tea? Really? (Smirk) Ok – water in a cup for her. I’ll have a skinny double-shot, extra-hot, flat white, in a takeaway cup.”

Coffee snobbery is rife amongst Perth poseurs. At my local coffee house, my delicate teacup and saucer signposts me as persona non grata.  Apparently, I take up too much space at the pocket-sized tables with my collection of dinky pots (one for hot water) and my jug of frigid milk.

I have but one ally who shares my disdain for coffee snobs: a lawyer no less (and a tea-totaller to boot). Emboldened by the promise of anonymity, he sounded off at a recent poolside barbeque: “Coffee addicts are an unholy alliance between heroin junkies and wine snobs. Of course, they mask their sad dependence by acting self-righteous and superior. But we non coffee-drinkers are very tolerant people.” (His wife took me behind a palm tree to say: “He thinks he’s a small L liberal, but really he’s a big F fascist).”

Cafe society has its own pecking order and tea-drinkers are its eccentrics.  Coffee purists would rather we Mad Hatters fraternised amongst ourselves out of sight. They would prefer we took tea at home in our Wonderlands resplendent with knitted tea cosies, Wedgwood china and silver spoons. That’s where time stands still and it’s never too late for a cuppa tea.

My husband, too, is a smug caffeine addict. At work, he’ll schlep up and down St George Terrace in pursuit of his preferred barista. Town baristas have cult followings. My husband’s current favourite has a nose ring and a front mullet (ristretto drinkers call that a frollet). Last I heard, that hairy barista and his coffee machine were operating to wide acclaim from a hole in a wall in London Court (brick dust makes the coffee taste authentically Colombian).

I tell you this because I like to practice hypocrisy. Last week, as my tea-rista filled my pot with steaming water, he leaned conspiratorially across the counter: “Don’t you miss coffee?”

I went blank. Then I weaved my way back to my table juggling my saucer and rattling cup in one hand – teapot and milk jug in the other. Boiling water dripped onto my big toe. I jumped, and my spoon clattered to the floor: a flotilla of heads jerked up from their macchiatos and skinny lattes and their riveting coffee-enhanced conversations.

Under the scrutiny of that cafe crowd, I had an epiphany: I did miss coffee! I missed being dark and dangerous and brooding. I missed sneering at tea-drinking fools. I re-traced my steps to the counter and announced: “Okay, Alberto, I surrender! Gimme me a weak flat white.”

He winked at me and belted his last puck of spent coffee grounds into the knockbox: “One lukewarm milkshake for the born-again coffee virgin coming right up!” The businessman at my elbow snickered.

Within an hour of that coffee, my single entendres had doubled. My brain was Stephen Hawkingly-alert. I began reciting TS Eliot in my head. I decided I too, could measure out my life in coffee spoons. And then I drifted home in a daze of caffeine euphoria.

My renewed infatuation with coffee has caused some consternation at home. My husband now has to share his prized coffee machine. Some mornings, I catastrophise that he loves that coffee machine more than me.

My husband is fastidious about his morning brew. He’s obsessed with the surgical cleaning of his beloved contraption. Most mornings this week, he has beckoned me from my lukewarm milkshake to lecture me on why I should be grateful to have a three-some with his machine.

He gruffly points out the trail of coffee grounds across the kitchen bench. He gets down on his hands and knees to demonstrate how they have spilled onto the floor and made it gritty. He accuses me of not wiping the dark orifice where the groupo attaches to the machine. (Only coffee nerds could come up with a name like groupo for a metal filter with a handle). He says I haven’t scraped the last deflated bubble of dried milk from the frothing proboscis. (I too, can up with stupid names for ordinary things).

To avert a serious domestic, I promise him I’ll be more respectful of the coffee ritual. I slink back to my sweet warm pudding of a drink and force myself to think sweet warm thoughts about my man.

And then I have another epiphany: Hang on! We’re on the same side! I am once again a coffee addict. That makes me one of the in-crowd. Coffee makes me invincible. It’s time we high-borns showed those ridiculous tea-types who’s boss.