COFFEE, NICCOTINE AND BOHEMIAN LONDON IN 1999
Plumes of cigarette smoke fill the café,
Rising silently and majestically
Like little grey hot-air balloons.
Conversations mingle and merge into
A pleasant cacophony of sound.
Everyone’s devouring endless cups
of coffee: Latte, espresso, black,
white, skinny, short and tall.
Nobody’s rushing – it’s as if time’s
Standing still within those smoke-stained walls.
Waiting for its passengers to smoke themselves
To death and contract caffeine-induced
Stomach ulcers.
Yet it all seems so much more civilised
and cultured than the hustling, bustling
real life which continues ceaselessly
beyond the café’s windows. The frantic
rush outside, seen from the inside,
has a bizarrely calming effect on the
pseudo-continental-bohemian-wannabes
sitting whiling the hours away over their
coffees and cigarettes and books and
conversations.
Notting Hill bohemia is the only God whom
the customers within worship. A beret-vendor
could retire of all the caffeine-addicts,
who’d no doubt buy up his entire
stock, if given half a chance.
But still, at least, everyone is sober
And relatively drug-free; so,
comparatively speaking, London bohemia
is a harmless – albeit somewhat surreal –
way-of-life compared
to,
say,
crack-cocaine and suicide.
THE END!
Plumes of cigarette smoke fill the café,
Rising silently and majestically
Like little grey hot-air balloons.
Conversations mingle and merge into
A pleasant cacophony of sound.
Everyone’s devouring endless cups
of coffee: Latte, espresso, black,
white, skinny, short and tall.
Nobody’s rushing – it’s as if time’s
Standing still within those smoke-stained walls.
Waiting for its passengers to smoke themselves
To death and contract caffeine-induced
Stomach ulcers.
Yet it all seems so much more civilised
and cultured than the hustling, bustling
real life which continues ceaselessly
beyond the café’s windows. The frantic
rush outside, seen from the inside,
has a bizarrely calming effect on the
pseudo-continental-bohemian-wannabes
sitting whiling the hours away over their
coffees and cigarettes and books and
conversations.
Notting Hill bohemia is the only God whom
the customers within worship. A beret-vendor
could retire of all the caffeine-addicts,
who’d no doubt buy up his entire
stock, if given half a chance.
But still, at least, everyone is sober
And relatively drug-free; so,
comparatively speaking, London bohemia
is a harmless – albeit somewhat surreal –
way-of-life compared
to,
say,
crack-cocaine and suicide.
THE END!
