Day 122

M drinks a massive mug of Americano with a bit of warm milk each morning (and two at the weekend). Now I’ve started drinking coffee again, I’m drinking it the only way it should be drunk – a tiny cup of black espresso just as it comes. The biggest mystery is how the coffee machine actually differentiates between a big mug and a tiny espresso cup. I think the answer probably lies in the button on the machine which says Calc, though exactly how is beyond my impractical mind.  Not that it’s actually important, as long as the coffee comes out and is good. M is busy looking for holidays to book so we can escape to somewhere hot for the first time in a long time later this year. Let’s hope she finds somewhere that gives me good espresso in tiny cups.

As you can see, I was very indulgent this morning. The only problem with drinking coffee again, though, is that I crave more than one cup of the stuff now as soon as I’ve finished the first and only cup. I hasten to add that I don’t shot the coffee in one, but sip it slowly and carefully so I can savour the taste I’d been missing for the last 14 years. I had been worried yesterday that I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I did, and only woke twice in the eight hours I was in bed for. That’s another first, actually. A very odd thing.

Although it’s very grey this morning, the day smelled of ripeness when I walked out into it first thing this morning. A scent of well-roundedness and contentedness is how I would describe it. Where the air envelops you without you noticing its touch. That’s why I had my coffee outside, why I felt at ease. Even though both times I woke up in the night the first thing on my mind was what I was going to write here this morning. Well, now I know. And perhaps this is what TS Eliot meant when he said “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

I will stick with the one cup of coffee now. It gives me a feeling of luxury and time gained, makes me feel just a little bit more alive in a time of uncertainty, a time of questioning, a time of change. And maybe it’s the change I need, one that harks back to when I was on the Ice, when I was slightly more nimble on my feet and in my head, but without a feeling of nostalgia, and instead with a feeling of renewal and hope.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 79