Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Easter Holidays
In the end, it was paper cups that convinced me that everything might just be all right, in the end.
Well, kind of. When I was younger - so much younger than today - coffee shops were places of china or mugs and were fairly rare outside of the metropolitan centres. Coffee to go was instant coffee, in a plastic or paper cup, with or without milk or sugar.
But all the times I saw American culture - via television or films - they always seemed to drink their coffee out of paper cups. If they were in New York, they were white paper cups with a blue design on them, which looked, oddly, Greek somehow. That, and they always ate Chinese food out of paper cartons, either at home or leaning on a car, talking, looking effortlessly cool.
If you did that in Britain, you'd be eating soggy chow mein out of an aliminium carton, and where's the romance in that? I can say that, having done it, it's nowhere to be found, especially when you buy it from the stall just outside of Oxford Circus and then have to carry your admittedly nice Chicken noodles into the tube.
Now, suddenly, coffee shops are everywhere, although slightly less so since the whole crunchy credit thing. But coffee shops are a sign of western civilisation's own breed of humanity's ability to change, however slowly, into a more efficient - and, admittedly, costly - form. Now you can get a smile with your coffee to go. In my day - and I shudder to think that I can actually legitimately use the phrase - it just wouldn't have happened. Maybe a chemical-tasting cup of tea from a machine, or an equally foul instant coffee.
Now? Thirty choices of coffee, hot or cold, small, medium or large, shots, flavours, half-fat, no-fat, decaf, half-caf, soy-milk, whatever the hell you want.
This is an odd proof that humanity can adapt, but proof it is, nonetheless, and for now, I'll take it.
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