LIFE
Real life
Melissa Kite
Coffee shops are becoming impossible. I
had been standing in the queue at Caffè
Nero on Battersea Rise for nearly half an
hour behind a man ordering a round of cof-
fees that were so complex, so detailed and
intricate, so different from each other, so
bespoke and unique, that it would have been
quicker to get served if I had been standing
behind a man ordering a helping of weap-
ons-grade plutonium and a custom-made
Range Rover.
I had nipped in to buy a coffee and a
croissant. Silly me, for wanting a coffee and
a croissant.
The man in front of me was ordering
something like, from memory: ‘One regular
black Americano with one and a half shots;
one regular decaff white Americano with
one shot, skimmed milk; a grande caramel
full fat latte with two shots and extra froth;
a regular soya cappuccino with one shot and
chocolate on top, a large cappuccino with
one and a half shots, skimmed normal milk
and no chocolate; a large soya latte with two
shots, easy on the froth; a macchiato with
two shots and extra foam; and a small decaff
mocha, normal milk, half a shot, no choco-
late, extra cream.’
In other words, he ordered all the sizes,
all the coffee strengths, to the nearest deci-
mal place, all the milks, and all the different
frothing and topping possibilities.
Some of the coffees were so ludicrous I
don’t know why their human counterparts
had ordered them. After all, if you want de-
caff, why on earth are you worrying about
whether or not you get one shot of un-cof-
fee in it or two, or indeed one and a half?
It took the single barista on duty 20
minutes to assemble the various concoc-
tions correctly, writing carefully on each
paper cup complex codes that summed
up the ingredients so no one would have
their human rights infringed by sampling a
sip of cow’s milk rather than soya, or being
assaulted by one shot when they wanted
one and a half.
Thank goodness we weren’t in Star-was in plaits. Tom and Tessa, whom I had
not met before, were dressed casually and
youthfully. I wore a Regency-buck tail coat
with gold and silver curlicues, a jolly Jack Tar
stripy T-shirt under a yellow moleskin waist-
coat, blue neckerchief densely patterned
with skulls, pillar-box red canvas trousers, a
broad cowhide belt with a toy cutlass shoved
through it, and fake blood smeared copious-
ly about my visage. I’d come as Villeneuve,
I told them.
We careered into the bottles and decant-
ers on the table, which were as thickly clus-
tered as masts at a Spithead review. Besides
toasting ‘the Immortal Memory’, we lifted
our glasses with the traditional navy toasts
of ‘a Bloody War or a Sickly Season’ and ‘a
Willing Foe and Plenty of Sea Room’. After
that we descended into the only kind of din-
ner party I like: everyone tipping it back like
there’s no tomorrow and shouting across
one another.
The traditional Trump discussion didn’t
rear its ugly head until the plums. Periph-
eral roaring died away and a measured
conversation coalesced piously around the
Donald. With the exception of Villeneuve,
with his toy cutlass and fake blood com-
ing out of his ears, the crew were united in
their contempt and loathing for the man.
To snorts of derision I opined that the man
was a political genius. Yes, but what about
his unconscionable attitude to women, they
said? I said that it was my experience that
most men talk like that in the absence of
women. In any case, I added, while every-
one regained consciousness, wasn’t the guy
simply putting himself up as a lightning
rod for dissent against the political elite?
Maybe, they said, plums in their mouths,
but what is so wrong with political elites?
By and large, political elites mean well, they
said. Don’t they?
What about a sea shanty, I said? All day
I had been listening to sea shanties on Spo-
tify, downloading the most stirring ones, and
typing out duplicate lyrics. I distributed the
song sheets, married my phone to the port-
able Bluetooth speaker, selected ‘Up She
Goes’ (sung by the Fishermen’s Choir) and
whacked up the volume. ‘Up She Goes’ is a
simple tune with simple lyrics. It goes some-
thing like this: ‘And I kissed her on the face/
And the crew begins to roar/ Oh, oh, and UP
she goes, we’re bound for Baltimore.’In subsequent verses, as the crew roars
him on, the boastful narrator kisses her on
the cheeks, neck, lips, heart, legs, knees and,
finally, ‘everywhere’. The Trump opposers
yelled out the chorus — Oh! Oh! and UP
she goes! — lustily. I was not the only one
doing the actions, though I was the only one
on my feet, first crouching low then spring-
ing up and brandishing my fists.
Nicely warmed up by that, we Jolly Tars
next sang the lilting shanty ‘Rolling Home’:
‘Call all hands to man the capstan/ See the
cable run down clear/ Heave away and with
a will boys/ For old England we will steer.’
(The stirring chorus — ‘Rolling home, rolling
home, rolling home across the sea/ Rolling
home again to England/ Rolling home dear
land to thee’ — has been impossible to erase
from the forefront of my mind ever since.
Yesterday I played it through headphones
and sung along on the rower at the gym.)
Finally, we quietly remembered that
vain and tender individual whose memo-
ry we had gathered to commemorate. ‘Not
the least glory of the navy,’ observed Joseph
Conrad, ‘is that it understood Nelson.’ Nel-
son was seldom well throughout his career.
Competitively, we listed his injuries and ill-
nesses: seasickness, scurvy, malaria, dysen-
tery, typhoid, yellow fever, gout, septicaemia.
His teeth fell out. More famously, he was
blinded in the right eye and his right arm
was amputated below the elbow. At Trafal-
gar he was downed finally by a musket ball
fired from 50 feet away, which penetrated
his shoulder, smashed his spine and punc-
tured his aorta.
The dinner broke up relatively early
because our host, who was once shot by a
sniper, was leaving early the next morn-SEND TO: The Spectator Subscriptions Dept., 17 Perrymount Rd,
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SHA10Aing to report for a week on the break-up of
the migrant camp at Calais. As we parted,
we wished him well, saying that we hoped
he would avoid there at least some of the
other maladies and afflictions endured by
Lord Nelson.The Trump opposers yelled out the
chorus – Oh! oh! and UP
she goes! – lustily