I am far from a coffee expert. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a Brazilian medium roast coffee bean or one hand-picked by Kenyan elephants and roasted on an open fire. That’s too much poncey detail for me. No, when I say I love coffee, I am referring to the Going-For-Coffee coffee experience. The process of calling someone up and popping that all-important, timeless question, the question which has brought more bored, lonely people together than match.com ever will: “Do you want to go for coffee?” The most used phrase in my vocabulary. GFC (Going-F0r-Coffee) is a very specific experience, however. When I say GFC, I don’t mean, grabbing a quick skinnysoytripleshotcafelatte and scalding your tongue/mouth/face/trachea taking desperate sips whilst running for the bus. And I certainly don’t mean having coffee at home, even if it is from your new coffee machine which arrived yesterday and even makes capuccinos dahling. GFC has three specific criteria which make it the proper GFC experience. And this is what I do best:
1. The GFC experience must be long. Certainly over an hour, three hours being the ultimum length. The angrier the cafe waiter gets with you for sitting there for so long having only purchased one drink, the better.
2. GFC is not for catching up with long lost friends who you haven’t seen in a decade. That’s a different type of coffee experience. My GFC is for the friends that are always there, that you see almost every day, that you technically should have nothing left to talk about with anymore but whose mutual love for GFC means you are still there day in, day out, Going-For-Coffee
3. GFC with said friend(s) must always happen at the same coffee place. Perhaps there’s a shortlist of 2 or 3 which you choose from with that specific GFC partner, but no more. Preferably stick to the same place, then only one set of staff will hate you for your prolonged, cheap visits and and flavour your coffee with their saliva.
GFC is stress-free, no-pressure socialising with the added perk of caffeine, and minus the expense/calories of going out for dinner. In times of need, GFC always pulls through as a source of comfort and tranquility and, of course, procrastination. It may, granted, be best for students, the lazy, bored or unemployed, but it is still an artform. It is a much-needed antidote to the too-often used phrase: “ A coffee to go, please”.
