Hanging out for a Carlisle Street latte.

It isn't possible to live in two places at once and more's the pity. I'd like to have the best of two worlds, because sometimes the grass is greener, the toilet paper softer and Heinz CREAM OF tomato soup the only thing to make you feel better when you are poorly. Glasgow is miles better and Scotland pure dead brilliant and for making comparisons, highlighting differences and specifying a preference I have, in the past and on more than one occasion been called whatever the Scottish version of a whinging pom is. Oh yes, a whinging pom.

The shoe is now on the other foot and I run the risk of being a cut above the rest, too big for my boots and fancying for not being happy with a cup of nescafe, indeed a cup of tea.

But I am hanging hanging hanging out for a carlisle street latte and there's precious little round these parts that comes close.

For starters a latte here simply isn't a latte. It is a long hot milk in a tall hot chocolate glass with what seems like a hot milky coffee pored in. And when I say hot I mean far too hot. There's no enjoying your coffee any time soon because it is scalding. In fact all the coffee here is too hot and I can't work out if that is because the milk is heated to a much higher temperature, or the coffee itself and to be fair it isn't that the coffee is burnt or scalded, but your mouth most certainly will be if you aren't patient. As for the cappuccinos, they aren't so unfamiliar, but on return i find what was once my favourite coffee is too strong and too short and there's simply not enough drinking to pleasure in it. At the other extreme I could have a coffee from Starbucks, but they only seem to come in pint, litre and gallon sized.

The only option now, when I can find it, is to order a flat white. Now I have to confess that I never had a Melbourne flat white - one regular latte and I had found my drink of choice. Medium strength, rich roast, at perfect drinking temperature and with a rich creamy foam that goes from top to bottom. On working days I would often postpone the pleasure of my single morning coffee till almost lunchtime and the coffee was no less enjoyed for being in a take away cup. I'd drink it half down and then remove the lid and give it a swirl to make sure I caught all the foam. On the weekends the pleasure would be all the more for sitting at a cafe table with the coffee glass resting on a pretty vintage saucer. I'd idly stir the teaspoon once around the top of the coffee before I drank it in sips and once or twice after to make sure I caught all the foam around the edges. The odd day when I was tired or feeling extravagant I would order a second, but I never enjoyed it as much as the first and often as not It would leave me with a bit too much caffeine buzzing about.

Maybe I should bugger off back to Melbourne if I like the coffee there so much. I can read it on people's faces. See it in their eyes. I am a coffee snob. An elitist. A bore. Actually I feel like an addict cut off from a dependable source. Forget five months of no nicotine, it's the coffee I miss. I'm preoccupied. I can't get that first sip out of my mind. It's beginning to interfere with my life, my daily routine, my friendships. It would interfere with my job, if I had one. I can't stop talking about it. I've been looking up photos of old coffees on my computer. I'm even driving the long way round in the hope I'll come across a new coffee outlet I didn't know about.





Until I find a dependable source a Costa flat white it will have to be. It's bigger than it should be, but not so much. Hotter than is drinkable but if you wait five minutes it is alright. And it is a little too strong, but that helps see me through until the next Costa which could be days, weeks, away.

Like so many good things, I didn't know how much I would miss it till I was gone.
Good times, good times.