B is for Busybodies

When Jackson attended a daycare closer to home I used to have time to drop into Starbucks. I didn't have much time but 30 minutes in the morning was a great interlude to chill with a book before work.

I like Starbucks, even though you can end up remortgaging your house to pay for a triple cherry, quadruple fluffed mattressochino if you are not careful.

I always order a small house coffee and make a beeline for the comfy chair. While Starbucks was seen as an extension of American cultural imperialism back in Britain because the company would take over all the nicest historic structures. over here it feels rather sophisticated and abstactly ethical for a chain.

However, Jackson's daycare was switched up a couple of months ago. I no longer pass Starbucks. The best I can hope for is a roadside 7-Eleven.

Now 7-Elven coffee is a strange concept. The first time I found one I was rather excited by the choices that include Colombian, Mountain Roast and a number of other exciting sounding brands.

It's only after trying them all that you come to the conclusion there's one basic flavor; and it's dessicated camel poo.

So now I am under no illusions. I am there for the caffeine fix; nothing more, nothing less.

Except the 7-Eleven I am frequenting in Suffolk has one other factor going against it, the resident busybody.

I'm moody enough knowing I'm going to work and am about to ingest camel poo. As if that weren't bad enough, this individual, a rangy middle aged employee with oversized hair, is always at the coffee counter with a rancid looking cloth in her hand, pretending to be doing something.

When I move to the left to grab a coffee pot she'll move to the left; when I move to the right, she'll move to the right. I daresay if I performed an amazing leap to the ceiling I'd find her blocking my way to the strip light.

"Oh, I'm not in your way am I?" she'll say as she again blocks my path to the stirring sticks and starts refilling them one by one with the speed of a tortiose coming out of hibernation.

"Not at all."

Of course I want to say: "Can't you sod off Doris and stack some mints somewhere else."

I don't actually know her name but if it's not Doris, it should be. That or Doreen, certainly not Paris.

Now my coffee coordination skills in the morning are not at their best as it is, mainly because I am caffeine deprived. I have to get out my notebook and draw a flow chart that links pouring to milk to lid etc. So imagine my consternation when the busybody is blocking Route One to the lids.

Yesterday she was grabbing the creamer container, mindlessly refilling it, even though it was almost full. A guy almost got into a circular kind of altercation with her as he pulled it one way and she pulled it back again.

I couldn't even dispose of my sugar wrapper down the chute without her throwing herself into my path with her manky old cloth, wiping the rim.

Note to self: Resist the urge to scream out 'please stop cleaning my hole'

I'm not sure what's with the 7-Elven busybody but I'm starting to get a complex that she lies in wait in some busybody recess and ambles over to the coffee counter as soon as she sees me getting out of my car. This is probably exess paranoia on my part but busybodies can do this to you.

I'm not sure if my definition of busybodies is the same as that of the national debate which seems to equate the term with liberals who are taking away our rights.

U.S. Senator Rand Paul’s toilets don’t work. And, he says, it’s the government’s fault, reports Bloomberg.com, for example.

This seems to relate to low energy flushes and efficient lightbulbs.

But frankly I don't care too much about that. I'd just like this infernal woman to stop getting between me and the miserable jar of coffee that might keep me awake for a couple of hours longer.