Being Me

I won't say which coffee shop chain it was, although I doubt my critique would chip much off their bajillion-dollar profits, but yesterday I ordered an iced cappuccino, thus entering into one of the most bewildering half-hours of my life. This picture tells you what I'd expected. The following picture describes what happened more effectively. This wasn't a drink. This was a froth nightmare, a challenge, the kind you get on game shows. There was an inch or so of coffee in the bottom of the tall glass, then the rest, about three feet of it, was thick, white, stiff froth. I stirred with the straw I'd been given. Surely the coffee would mix with the froth. The drink laughed. The straw bent. I stirred again, faster. The drink guffawed. I fetched a spoon and began eating the froth, which stayed solid, like raw meringue mix. What do they add to it? Prittstick? The glue they put wounds back together with? I stirred again, maniacally. This time...

We're in Whitby, Yorkshire, on holiday for a fortnight. We're in the second week now and the holiday's been pretty steamy so far. We'd only been in the holiday apartment for five minutes when we realised we were overlooking not only the harbour but the railway line and that, four times a day, we'd see steam trains arriving and departing. Here's what we saw. My husband received this news in a moderate and understated manner, leaping from sofa to sofa and yelling, 'Yippee!' and 'Whoop whoop!' and singing the Thomas the Tank Engine theme tune while waving his arms around. He's a steam geek. We used to own a record, back in the days when people owned records, on which each track was a different steam engine, setting off from or arriving into a station. To my ear, I wouldn't say the tracks were - er - varied. But I'm not a steam engine fan. People who aren't Rod Stewart fans, or Bob Dylan fans, probably say the same about the...