Espresso

I spilt my coffee all over the table and if it hadn’t been for that, I would not have become who I am today.

It all started that morning. The twenty third of August. I woke up ten minutes late feeling exhausted. And my hands were shaking in that way that only coffee can cure. Or cause. I am not a habitual coffee drinker. I would not know.

I went into the coffee shop and asked for their strongest drink. The coffee-tender looked at me oddly before pouring me an espresso. I overheard a man wearing a cashmere jumper saying primly that it was called ‘espresso, not expresso’, and he ‘didn’t know where these hobos got their kicks’.

Nevertheless, I sat down with quite a thump, earning me some disapproving glances from a pair of thickly spectacled young ladies who were tapping away at ten thousand words per minute, while simultaneously sipping their drinks. Whatever they were drinking looked heavenly because they kept smacking their lips and commenting on the divinity of their beverage.

So I took my first sip of espresso, turning my eyes to the golden rays of morning sunshine flooding the city streets, preparing my mind for the stressful day at work ahead, when the abominable taste of coffee knocked me to my senses. I spluttered most unbecomingly and slapped the table, feeling my face flush deeply as I struggled to contain the hot coffee in my throat without choking.

Choke I did, of course, and I made such a palaver of it that everybody stopped what they were doing to stare at me. Well done, they all thought, can’t even choke quietly.

While I was making my racket my hand flew outwards uncontrollably and I knocked the espresso all over the table.

There is a monster under my bed. I swear it. And he is intent on having me scramble out of bed on the wrong side every day, minutes late for anything I set out to do. There is a monster under my bed, and he is hindering me from success.

Nick Jackson: ‘My take on Edward Hopper’s famous “Nighthawks” painting. This one was a photo of a steamed up coffee shop on a cold night in Shoreditch, London.’