An Unintended Late Night

Swimming

The day began with a coffee a the tent, then I cycled down to the beach for an early morning swim in the sea at Clonea Bay just as the tide was starting to come in.

It was a very still morning with a mackerel sky and hardly a ripple on the surface of the water. There was no-one around but dog walkers and a couple of huge guys from Michigan who had also been for a swim, so we talked about whether Lakes Michigan or Superior were colder to swim in than the Atlantic here. We all agreed that Lake Superior, when it comes to being flipping FREEZING, is superior. I once went in up to my ankles and discovered for the first time that you can get the equivalent of an agonising toothache in your feet. I did swim in the lake once or twice after that, but only when it was baking hot and there was a sheltering bay to take the edge off the icy water a tiny bit. They say the Great Lakes started life as glaciers, but Superior stayed that way.

Coffee

If you did a word search through every blog post on Incidents of Travel, there are two words that probably would appear the most often: ‘bike’ (or ‘bicycle’), and ‘coffee’.

Coffee has become such a ‘thing’ in our culture, ‘our’ meaning the virtually whole planet’s. When I was a kid, coffee was either a teaspoon of fine powder scooped straight from a big Nescafé tin (if it was posh, own brand if it wasn’t), then dissolved with boiling water from a big urn (the typical cafe version), or it was a few scoops of ground ‘real’ coffee left to stew in an enamelled pot then poured out through a tea strainer, which still failed to stop it from being a very gritty drink (this was my mum and dads’ way of making ‘real’ coffee).

I know from watching Ealing Comedies and listening to Hancock’s Half Hour that London had Italian coffee bars as early as the 1950s, and maybe other cities too, but they were the rarity back then. In a great episode of Hancock’s Half Hour, ‘Fred’s Pie Stall’ (1959), the storyline is about the decline of a mobile tea van, when the council had decided to close a much-loved horse-drawn pie stall on the grounds that it was insanitary, and not in keeping with their efforts to modernise the town. (Here’s a link to the episode, but unfortunately it might not work if you’re outside the UK, sorry!)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b009h7l4?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

At Fred’s location on Cheam Market Square, he had just one teaspoon which was attached on a chain, and had been told by the council that he should not wash his cups out in the horse trough.

Meanwhile trendy, modern coffee bars were taking over on Cheam High Street, serving the Italian version of coffee, the one that we’ve become so accustomed to today, the cappuccino. Hancock moans about the waitresses, ‘sitting there with their green fingernails and their omnibus edition of Ibsen’, and Sid James wasn’t happy either:

‘I didn’t know the jargon, see? She comes up to me and says ‘Would you like a cappuccino?’, so I said I don’t fancy the chino, but I’ll ‘ave a cup of tea!’

Hancock agrees: ‘I made a right charlie of meself. I didn’t know they had brown sugar. I said to her, ‘Bring another bowl of sugar, somebody’s spilt their coffee in this one.’

Now every coffee stop involves a decision about whether to have a cappuccino, or a latte, or espresso or a flat white or whatever. I may be wrong but I think most of us, when we just want a hot cup of coffee, say ‘americano’ in the hope that it will be the simplest version of the drink. I admit that after my trip across America I miss the typical diner coffee, which is very unfashionable. I miss the endless refills and the steam coming out of the Bunn-O-Matic drip-filter coffee machines behind the counter, and the friendly chats with waiters and waitresses whenever they took the jug on a top-up-tour of the diner. The coffee was never amazing, but I honestly don’t always want my coffee (or my food) to be ‘amazing’. Simple stuff well made is enough, particularly when you’ve just spent hours on the road.

Breakfast (with coffee)

The beach cafe opened at 9 and I was the first one in for the Big Breakfast and an americano.

Then down on the beach again I read my book (Margaret Atwood’s The Year Of The Flood) and chatted with some locals. Lunch was a picnic all from the beachfront shop, followed by a sleep at the tent before another longer sea swim. The same waitress who’d served me breakfast now served me with a bag of chips from the traditional Irish Chipper they also run – open 5-9pm every evening – meaning she’d been there on one of their busiest days for 8 hours straight, but was still smiling and friendly with every single customer.

Then it was a shower and back on the bike to ride into Dungarvan again, to watch the footy. What happened?

We lost in a final again. I tried Downey’s Bar first, but it was pitch black and miserable inside, so instead I watched the first half in the Anchor Bar with Spain fans (i.e. everyone) then cycled home to watch the second half in the campground TV room, with more Spain fans. If only just one of them was Spanish. They even booed when we got a free kick.

Rain is forecast for tomorrow, so I packed up pretty thoroughly after the game and will have to wait and see when’s best to leave. Could be quite a long wait…

A special message

I’m sending loads of love and best wishes for speedy recovery to my sister-in-law Laurice (you may remember that I stayed with her and my brother Oliver in Florida at the end of last summer’s ride), who broke her leg yesterday. Thinking of you Laurice, and my bro who is flying home from England right away to be with her. Bxx

Signs That Are Funny

Busy Stats Day Yesterday

I guess Saturdays in summertime are a peak viewing time, which is great! Thanks everyone, and for the lovely messages. Keep them coming. Go Malaysia!: