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I could spend the rest of my life living vicariously cruising social media, waiting for something to happen or I could organise myself using the tool that social media can be and live far more in the moment exploring living first hand. These thoughts arrived whilst thinking about coffee.
I have a little one person coffee machine. Fill it with water and the required amount of ground coffee, press a little button on the side and voila! a cup of coffee appears. The process takes about 5 minutes. Tricia rarely drinks coffee so a one cup machine suits us well but when someone pops in for a coffee we usually resort to instant coffee as 5 minutes is a long time to make a visitor wait for coffee. Imagine a few people dropping in.....
I’ll get back to the coffee topic in a minute.
I know it’s not easy to imagine on a hot sunny day but as I start this post it’s only 194 days until Christmas. At Christmas (unfortunately probably not for me) some of us get carried away in the great, retail driven, Christmas frenzy. Many will buy food that’ll be thrown away or not eaten until Easter, spend far too much on far too much junk, kids will often revel in the cardboard boxes rather than their contents and by the following year we will have completely forgotten who gave us what and even forgotten what the what was. The vast majority may not know why Christmas is always spelled with a capital 'C' or the origins of those quaint old Christmas songs.
What surprises me and what loads of us do is add stress to a potentially stressful time of year by committing to seeing people “before Christmas". We find ourselves saying “I'll see you before Christmas” or deciding to decorate the lounge the second week of December “It’s ok I’ll have it done before Christmas”. People you’ve not seen since last Christmas you must see “before Christmas”. Well I feel a little bit like that. Some people, it seems, must see me “Before........well Christmas it’s not! I’ve clearly started the whole gruesome thing by deciding to be so public about my demise but I’m constantly fascinated by peoples reactions.
Don’t misinterpret me here, I love seeing people. So much so that it seems socially conducive, for me anyway, to see people en masse. Take Saturday as a prime example. 3 friends of Lauren, and by extension, 3 friends of mine asked if they could come to visit. I was delighted. They all arrived at the same time. Now this is a good use of my time. Instead of 3 friends = 3 visits it was 3 friends = 1 longer 10am visit. But what if, like me, they all wanted a coffee? It’s one thing seeing friends en masse but perhaps I need to think of doing a bit of hospitality en masse.
Back to coffee.
Generally I like my coffee black and sweet, sometimes I like white without sugar and occasionally I like my coffee white and sweet. But generally the base coffee ingredient needs to be good. Sometimes if I ask at a coffee place for a black coffee, my order is confirmed as an Americano without milk. Hmmmm yes I suppose so. Perhaps the next time my order is “corrected" I’ll change my mind and order a Grande cinnamon dolce latte with vanilla syrup, fat free whipped cream and sprinkles. Whatever that is.
So how to do coffee en masse and reasonably quickly?
A filter coffee machine could be the answer. I dive again into Farcebook marketplace and voila! A filter coffee machine but not just any old filter coffee machine an industrial two jug job. Now we can make a 1.5 litres jug of coffee in 5 minutes, that's 2.64 pints or 6 cups and we’ve got two jugs! Coffee en masse. Now for a church hall teapot!
What about me? Well on Sunday evening we had a few guests in the garden until quite late including my brother Jon his wife Elizabeth and my niece Katherine who I met again at AJs on Monday morning. I got some jobs done, then after lunch had my nap. In the evening we got some pizzas at Lostwithiel then went home with the pizza people (Simon and Sarah) for some coffee for the big coffee machine. By my standards, a full day. I knew I was pushing it a bit. I went to bed and slept for almost 10 hours.
Yesterday, Tuesday, I can only describe as a complete right-off. I felt dreadful all day. I was asleep by 9.30pm and slept for even longer. Note to self. “Take it easy”. (Maybe I was just a bit off colour).
Well today I’m taking it easy. I have my port being flushed today. Remember my port? It’s how I used to get my chemo pumped in. It’s better to keep it flushed than have it surgically removed you never know it might still come in useful. That’s my high point, closely followed by our Sainsbury's delivery. Tomorrow at 10am it’s off for coffee at The Pier House Hotel at Charlestown, on the terrace facing the harbour.
Hopefully the weather holds.
Hopefully I hold.