the adlards

Wherein the author, having (hopefully temporarily) reached the end of his shallow supply of wit, seeks unashamedly to satisfy coffee lovers, Steve who wants to hear more about monkeys, and even Peter who loves to hate affected prose.

Today I distracted myself by negotiating a preferrential rate with a rather nice hotel I’d like to try but which hadn’t previously fallen within budget, getting my airmiles statement bang up to date (I shall have access to The Lounge from the week after next), and visiting Origin (the subject of a previous comment by my esteemed aunt from deepest some-small-island-in-Indonesia-I-think).

Origin is the best coffee supplier I have ever visited. Now I’m about to say I was overwhelmed by the choice which just isn’t true – in fact as I walked in and smelled the aromas of the place my brain leapt out through my nose and started dragging itself with some vigour across the floor towards the counter such that there was no real possibility of being overwhelmed as there was no longer a subject for the action, so to speak. I honestly couldn’t tell my arabica from my robusta. But bear with me, it’s a figure of speech intended to protect my diginity. Somewhat overwhelmed by the choice, not to mention the fact that they were closed and didn’t think I should have got in the door, I went for their house blend which was still warm from the roaster. It’s very good. Smoother than I’d usually drink, but very good.

Driving home in a car full of warm well-rounded coffee smells, thinking of Origin, my mind wandered to last week’s monkeys (not as great a leap as it seems, from Origin to Darwin to Monkeys, particularly on a Friday afternoon in traffic). I remembered being taught the full title of the book a long time ago: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” and suddenly realised why those monkeys were going for the sugar from the coffee supply stand thingy. The little buggers new that all that really separates them from total world domination is the discovery of the right kind of bean. This was a truly shattering revelation – not because they know, but because they’re so close to the answer. Somewhere in their uncomplicated little detoxed brains they’ve figured out is has something to do with the coffee supply stand thingy. THEY’RE CLOSE. One day they’ll stop ignoring the foul-tasting black stuff that “couldn’t possibly be IT” and that’ll be the end. Tickets. I’m still shaking. Driving was tricky.

We should celebrate the simple things while we still can: a good cup of coffee, the transitory antics of the kids, a cracking family feud, or even just what we did today that wasn’t about how many thousand dollars we earned. Life is, after all, about the small things. Until the monkeys take even that away from us.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 8:54 pm by james and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.