Categories: ramblings
Date: 02 March 2007 12:38:16
I was innocently walking to work this morning, and I went past one of the shops which closed down just before Christmas. It's clearly got a new tenant, because the shop-fitters have been in for the last couple of weeks. I stopped dead and let out an involuntary "oh, no!" because the new shop signs are up.
Starbucks.
Rosamundi-ville is getting a Starbucks.
I hate Starbucks, purveyor of overpriced, burnt and frankly just plain nasty coffee. I don't know what their tea is like, I've never tried it. I don't trust Americans to make proper tea, and by extension, I don't trust American companies, even those staffed by Brits, to make proper tea either.
Therefore, I'm getting a new Lenten discipline - to support my nice little local cafe, the one by the library with the comfy sofas and rather delightful home-made cakes, on a more regular and frequent basis than I have been doing.
Quite how Starbucks has become the retailing behemoth it has completely escapes me, unless it is just one more example of the triumph of style over substance that is all around us - why do people pay over huge amounts of cash for a paper cup of bitter, burnt coffee, when a couple of steps down the road there is a nice café, with proper squishy sofas and waitress service, which provides drinkable coffee in proper china cups, and it's cheaper, to boot?
I despair.
And the thing is, I had to buy some Starbucks beans the other day - about 7pm my hindbrain suddenly started shrieking "catastrophic out of caffeine error!" and I realised I'd run out of the coffee I normally drink at home (bought from a simply adorable little coffee merchant near Selfridges, darling), and the only place that was open and sold coffee beans was Starbucks. So I heaved a deep and profound sigh, and, needs must when the Devil drives (or, in this case, my near-terminal caffeine addiction strikes) and all that, in I went. Bought the Fair Trade one, took it home, next morning ground some up and brewed it, and it wasn't that bad. It's not on a par with HR Higgins' finest, but then I wasn't expecting it to be. It beats me what they do to it in their cafés to make it so vile.