I'm a secret Starbucks lover...

For once in my life I’m grateful to Starbucks. Not because I’ve made it my mission to visit every branch on the planet, nor because I like their coffee (admit it, it’s pretty average). No, I’m grateful to this multi-national highly reproductive coffee dispenser because it’s Sunday afternoon, and I’ve come here for a rest. I’ve just been to church and listened to a sermon about sex from an old Canadian guy – a bit like listening to your dad talking about his sex life, had lunch with some friends, and now I have a few hours to kill.

So, I spend $3.85 on a decaf soy latte, and climb sixteen noisy stairs to the first floor of my local ‘bucks. Taking a seat, I count eight other people like me – alone that is – and they’re all busy… reading, studying, listening to their ipods, smsing, one guy is colouring in, he must be a geography student. Hardly anyone’s actually drinking coffee, empty cups and discarded napkins litter the tables.

This quasi-community breathes in synch and there’s a strange sense of ‘belonging’ in this room with the ubiquitous beech chairs and chequerboard tables. We can all stay here as long as we like, all day if we feel like it, because we can’t be thrown out… it would go against the ‘home from home’ advertising by-line. So here we are, in our public lounge, our home for the afternoon, entertaining ourselves by not speaking to anyone else. I wonder what would happen if I tried to start a conversation with someone… it stays a thought, it would be too weird. What would I say? ‘Do you come here often?’ The eternally bad chat-up line.

I did a talk about a year ago about how ipods are the symbol of our generation – the epitome of selfishness, music for one (I now own one so include myself). Just as we listen to our own private vibes, being here in this fridge-like coffee shop on a hot day accentuates the defragmentation of our society. We think we ‘are’, we think we ‘exist’, we think we ‘belong’ here, but we’re lying to ourselves. We’re very much alone on these rented chairs. The guy next to me is a foreign country. My visa has been refused.