It's Britain, But Not As We Know It

Lately, I’ve been suffering a mild case of ennui, which is disturbing in itself; being in England, I should be a bit bothered, or feeling as if I can’t be arsed, but this just proves my point.

The problem is, it’s a sunny Saturday morning and I am standing in a queue at one of the 867 coffee-bars in our little town, surrounded by the din and bustle of eighteen year olds scurrying to man the cappuccino machine and listening to squalling children clattering over and under the too-tightly packed tables and chairs while their over-wrought mum’s encourage them to behave by shouting the occasional, “Oi! Kevin! Give that man back his cane!” In front of me, a man shouts to the spike-haired teenager behind the counter (both to be heard above the racket and to gain her grudging attention), “I’ll have a tall, skinny latte and a strawberry Danish.”

This is wrong. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! I should be in a tea shop (or, preferably, in Ye Olde Tea Shoppe) surrounded by clipped, English accents chatting politely and quietly about the weather over cups of tea and plates of scones with butter, gooseberry jam and clotted cream. Since when did my quaint High Street turn into mid-town Manhattan? What happened to the quiet, unhurried lifestyle that so captivated me with I first landed on these shores? Is it gone for good, or has it simply moved to Pycombe?

Personally, I blame the coffee. By embracing the American coffee-culture, Britons are becoming just as frenzied and boisterous and demanding as their crass colonial cousins. A tea shop encourages you to relax, sit back and enjoy your surroundings; a coffee-bar is just frantic caffeine fix, gulped down in jittering haste to hold you until you make it to the end of the block where the next coffee bar is. It’s a lifestyle that does not foster patience.

Before the coffee-boom, Brits seemed more content to shop in the village stores, picking up produce from the green grocer, cheese from the cheese shoppe and feminine hygiene products from Boots. Now, however, they aren’t satisfied unless they can buy all of these, along with hair dryers and microwave ovens, at the Tesco-Extra on the old industrial estate outside of town.

And if this fails to offer the requisite amount of inconvenience to accompany your expediency, we are now being introduced to Do-It-Yourself check-out. Instead of waiting for a traditional till, where a disinterested youngster seeks to prove she can scan and chew gum at the same time (as well as chat with her mate at the customer service desk and occasionally answer her iPhone), you scan and pay for your shopping yourself.

I’ve used these in the States with satisfying results, but here they always seem to go tits-up, leaving me with a flashing screen and an admonishment to wait for the supervisor. This can take some time as the supervisor is busy assisting customers at one of the other dozen or so stations he is responsible for and daydreaming about the day he can start shaving. But, despite the obvious inadequacies, it provides the appearance of efficiency, which is why they are so wildly popular. It also means that eleven out of twelve eastern Europeans have been turfed out of a job because Britons can’t be bothered to queue anymore, but I doubt this has raised any alarm bells.

We really need a national referendum to bring back tea shops, if only so I can get better service. With all these coffee bars, you’d think it would be a breeze to walk in, find a seat and get a cup of coffee, but the queues are always out the door. This isn’t only because of their popularity; mostly it’s due to the ironic lassitude of the staff and the complexity of making each ‘coffee experience’ by hand. A double-dip frappuccino with a shot of espresso can take upwards of a quarter-hour, especially if they need a butter-croissant along with it. It’s almost painful to watch, like waiting for an order of tea in an American restaurant, with all the fumbling and uncertainty and eventual disappointment as you are presented with a cup of tepid water and a selection of three types of Twinnings herbal tea.

But the Brits aren’t intimidated by tea; it never fails to impress me how quickly they produce tea on demand, including a steaming pot with good, English tea steeping in it, an extra pot of hot water, a cup, a small beaker of milk and a bowl of rough-cut sugar cubes featuring two types of sugar. They can do that in less than five seconds, but they can’t get me a cup of coffee without a committee meeting.

If only everyone here would start acting more English, maybe then the Tea Shops would return and . . .

Excuse me, Natasha is looking expectantly at me, it must be my turn to order: “I’ll have a double-mocha cappuccino and a pan au chocola, please.”