ENTITLED
Guess who’s coming to dinner?
Twelve angry men, a woman called Golda,
Julie and Julia
The gang’s all here
Some like it hot
If Mr Smith goes to Washington
There will be blood
The third man waiting for happiness
Knowing a better tomorrow
Life is beautiful
In the heat of the night
Mary Poppins dances with wolves
Rab and Julie fell in love
They didn't know the danger
Attraction overrules real life
When stranger meets with stranger
And yet they somehow realised
To not be too overt
Kept their passions to themselves
Their meetings were covert
But joy must have it's outlet
Makes secrets hard to keep
Julie's mum knew something's up
When her girl can hardly sleep
She quizzes her young daughter
Plays the cunning sleuth
Doesn't take much digging
To get down to the truth
"Who's this Rab, and where's he from?"
A mother needs to know
Every detail of the boy
Her daughter has in tow
"From Leith" says Julie, proud that she
Has found herself a boyfriend
Who's not one of the usual crowd
And doesn't condescend
She speaks with pride of her own Rab
And how he's kind and gentle
Isn't that what really counts?
His home is incidental
Now dad's asking more about
Rab's parents and the background
Of this lad he's never met
That his daughter has found
A plumber and a cleaner?
He shook his head and sighed
"You don't mix with folk from Leith
When you come from Morningside"
He drove her down to Leith to see
Where Rab's family bided
One look up at their old flat
And he saw they were misguided
A poster in the window
Three letters spelling out
Support for independence
Dad now had no doubt
"There's no more Rab for you my girl
Those Nats are not for us
They want to split our country up
Now don't you make a fuss"
Rab's parents didn't help much
His dad got all irate
"No good comes from unionists
You need to get that straight"
But Rab and Julie were in love
They couldn't keep apart
Advice from parents doesn't hold
In matters of the heart
They arranged to get together
But mixed up where they'd meet
Ended up on different sides
Of a very busy street
The traffic seemed to race by
But across the road they ran
He was hit by a Bentley
And she by an old white van
These lovers should still be alive
But parents intercede
A line that nobody can cross
Is a line that we don't need
(With apologies to Willie Shakespeare...)
Swallowing the last bit of toast, he threw the still too-hot coffee in after it and got himself out the door. Checked his watch, ran, made the bus with about fifteen seconds to spare. And breathe. Or as well as he could behind a mask.
It was one of the rare days when he had to go into the office, and ten months of working from home had dulled his early morning abilities. With no routine to fall back on any more it became an adventure of uncertainty every time, an exercise in skin-of-the-teethness. It was becoming harder and harder to remember how he used to do it, and now his getting ready reflexes felt atrophied and clunky. They'd gone the way of other olde worlde skills like thatching roofs and drystane dyking. Welcome to the 2020s.
He started to think about how he used to be. Organised, slick, in the groove. Pre pandemic days, a period that increasingly felt like a lesson from history. By the time he went for the bus he'd have got himself groomed and suited and had some cereal, joined the queue in plenty time, and was early enough to get off two stops early to take in his favourite coffee shop and a bit of a walk along to the office. He missed that coffee shop.
He missed the coffee, so much better than anything his crappy kitchen machine could churn out. He missed the croissant he always had with it, fully justified by the wee bit walking that followed. And, he had to admit, he missed the service. He missed Keri. He missed her smile, her shiny black hair, her constant jollity. He missed her.
They'd never spoken beyond the usual exchanges and pleasantries she seemed to have for every customer. There'd never been a suggestion that the customer-server link could ever become anything more than that. Except that the suggestion was there, inside his head, a link into a fantasy world that escalated from coffee to a date, a date to the best sex of his life, the sex to marriage, the marriage to children, the children to a comforting slippered old age together. His fantasies didn't have an edit function.
He'd never voiced this to anyone. Probably never would. Least of all to Keri. The times he'd contemplated doing something about it he'd ended up sweating and panicking so much that he'd skipped his morning treat out of fear and embarrassment.
Would the coffee shop reopen when lockdown ended? Would Keri still be serving? Would his job go back to being office based? So many unknowns. All he did know was he missed his coffee. And croissant. And that smile. But at least he still had his fantasies.
