‘I suppose,’ said Sancho, ‘You’re in some café, stuffing yourself…’
Au contraire. Not Proven. How on earth is she so prescient? I shouldn’t have taken this call.
‘…when you should be working.’
The horrid truth was I had stopped in a ‘café’ and I was ‘working’. Unfortunately, when we gentlefolk light hauliers are toiling away, often we are not able to refresh ourselves in a delightful artisan establishment, a flavoursome noodle bar or a convenient retro tearoom. We’re in the Wild Bean Café.
WBC is a concession, probably owned by a monster conglomerate (just checked, British Petroleum, scrumptious), in garages up and down the land. I was at the Harthill branch.
In mitigation, my concentration was wavering on one of the most boring drives in Scotland: between Glasgow and Edinburgh on the M8. I was working and I needed to eat. A chap has to consider his blood sugar level and the likely detrimental effect of its being low on that afternoon’s dealings. So up the slip road I trundled.
Inside the M&S shop is the WBC. Wild Bean Cafés vary from a standing table in the smaller garages, generally strewn with ripped sugar packets and coffee cup rings, to flagship versions such as Harthill. Which is a large, windswept open area with clear access to the toilets (free, thanks) and dispensers of many condiments in Lilliputian amounts. Radio 2 is inescapable in the background. Chairs and tables are at once uncomfortable but also flimsy, in case one decides to begin a riot with whatever is at hand. Mottos, those maddening aphorisms and nudge theory prompts (*dispersed throughout this piece) from the empty corporate soul of WBC interior design are spaffed up the walls. They feature many random underlinings and varying size matey cursive fonts;
*’Freshly. Born and raised IN-STORE. OH-SO-SWEET. On the button. Treats. Everything. Stop me before I kill AGAIN. Smile. Golden Perfection. Obey. We’ve got everything. Keep you going. Come in and SAY HELLO. You can checkout anytime you like, but you can NEVER LEAVE.’
I may have made a few of those up.
The effect is somewhere between an empty ferry terminal waiting room and a prison visiting area that has had a reality TV makeover. Seems acceptable, but underneath the undeniable transience, fleeting nature and despair of human life keeps seeping through.
I got the standard, overchilled, reasonable value M&S food we’ve all had and put nourishment into my digestive system. The ‘café’ was empty. Many prefer to refuel their persons sitting in their vans or perhaps neck their pieces leaning over the nearby motorway bridge, magnetically drawn downward to their inevitable doom amongst the frenetic worker-ant travel of the speeding traffic below. Sweet release.
I chose to eat in amongst the hard, black tables and chairs, scarred sofas. The coffee tables bear witness to many work boots and not very clean ones at that. Ersatz brick wall pattern shiny wallpaper and unpleasant fluorescent lighting add to the feel of a space designed by the Home Office or Border Force.
The coffee you ask? To avoid paying £3.65 for 12 oz’s of boiling water haunted by the ectoplasm of a shot I went for a double espresso, hoping this might noticeably contain coffee. £3.20. Takeaway cup.
Here, I had hoped to be able to raise the tone and surprise you, confounding expectations and pointing out that the WBC is in many ways ever-so-slightly less worse than what we PMiV’s endure at some other motorway establishments. There is free parking, toilets, space, no hassle, quick service. 24 hour opening. WBC is Convenient.
My coffee was very hot, very burnt and roasted to provide the most caffeine with scant camouflage for its poor quality. This was at the expense of all the pleasures one associates with coffee. My tasting notes on the blend are as follows; burnt wellington boots, HGV tyre-shredding skid mark, oil rig flame out, blaze on an industrial estate requiring multiple fire-appliances to control….
I put it in the bin and left. Way past Edinburgh, I could still taste it.
*’WE look forward to serving YOU again soon!’
Truthfully, they will. When the road is long and dark, one is late, tired and choices are there none, even a Picky human in a van cannot be that picky. But could we, can we, do better?
We can.
McMurphy (Jack Nicholson): ‘Jesus, I mean, you guys do nothing but complain about how you can’t stand it in this place here and you don’t have the guts just to walk out? What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin’? ’.
Leave a comment if you must
You must be logged in to post a comment.