It’s my own fault. I shouldn’t eavesdrop on other people’s conversations when I’m lingering over a latte, mulling over a macchiato or cogitating over a cappuccino in a coffee shop or café.
I don’t deliberately earwig what my fellow coffee drinkers are talking about. Honest, Guv!
In my defence, M’lud, although I frequent some coffee shop chains, I prefer small, independent places where, to maximise their income, they cram in as many tables and chairs as possible, so I’m often this close to people on the next table!
Having established that I’m not some sort of ‘aural voyeur’, I was in one such tiny coffee shop recently, staring wistfully into my Americano as it slowly devoured the digestive biscuit which had slipped out of my fingers in mid-dunk.
Is there a more dispiriting sight than a biccie sinking below the surface of your hot drink? I think not.
While I was toying with the pros and cons of fishing the drowned digestive out of my cup with a spoon, a man and woman sat next to me.
I say ‘next’ to me. If they’d got any closer, she would have been sitting on my knee and he would have demanded to know how long the pair of us had been carrying on behind his back.
They were mid-conversation even before they sat next to me and she was telling him, “The fact is, I’ve never trusted Nigel. He’s as crafty as a barrow-load of monkeys”. A rather damning opinion, with which her male companion agreed.
But I couldn’t agree. She was wrong and I was itching to tell her.
Not that I had any idea who this ‘Nigel’ was. What I disagreed with was her use of the term ‘Barrow-load’.  The correct expression is ‘Barrel-load’, as anyone familiar with the expression knows.
It took enormous self-control to stop myself correcting her and I concentrated on retrieving my disappointingly dissolved digestive, while wondering how monkeys crammed inside a barrel might be considered ‘crafty’.
I’ll try and come up with an answer next time I’m in a café . . .