A friend I haven't seen for some time said he couldn't find me in my usual coffee joint where I had been almost part of the fixture for many years, for my daily 'fix' of black coffee, occasionally with a croissant. Before the 1st cup of coffee each morning I don't feel my day has begun. I told him I had changed to another coffee shop at the foot of a hill; it has always been either mountain or sea for me; preferably both.
We talked quite a while to make up for lost times, and he agreed with me that although in a tourist town like Roses, there are almost as many coffee bars as all the rest kind of shops put together, everyone, locals like ourselves, as well as some tourists, have their own favourite bar. Not necessarily the best, the cleanest, the most convenient to get to; not even necessarily one that serves the best coffee or with best service, not even if it's the cheapest; but for everyone' own peculiar reason, or no reason at all, they all have got their own place to consider 'home', the one they call 'My coffee shop', 'My bar' and I used to call mine, the one I fairly recently deserted, 'My office'. When I was first officially jobless years back; I thought it sounded better than telling everybody that I spent every morning in a bar!
I soon discovered that I was not the only one, and my 'office' had also been so many foreigners' 'office'. As it's a bar right in the very centre of Roses, by the beach front, where most people congregated, locals and specially tourists. I stopped being a tourist nearly immediately after I settled in this town, as I had bought my house before I came to stay. But somehow, I am amongst those who, for no particular reason, had got myself 'established' in that bar, nothing at all special, just the oldest ever bar in Roses.
I think I am a bit strange that way. My appearance, the way I dress, or talk, or whatever else I do, always seem to give others the impression that I am an ultra modern woman way up the front of all new trends, with tastes only for the newest and most up to date everything. NOT SO. Not that I consider myself old-fashioned, but I confess I do love a lot of old things, including customs, traditions, relics, old literature and general culture. And, old people. I respect them and have loads of patience with them, far more so than with people younger or of my same age, whereas normally I am not exactly a patient person, I seem to always want everything done and sealed yesterday.
Strange isn't it? My friend said 'YES!'
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