Keeping the Cafetiere.

I was making a pot of coffee tonight in my very ordinary cafetiere. (It is very ordinary, you know – one of the standard black plastic ones they sell everywhere for between £6 and £10 depending on whether it’s a discount store or not.) I had the sudden thought that maybe I should buy a new, more expensive, more stylish one.

‘Why would you want to do that?’ asked one of my brother personalities who must have been standing next to me all the time.

‘Well,’ I answered confidently, ‘if it was more stylish, I’d feel more stylish.’

‘And what purpose would that serve?’ answered the brother.

‘Erm, let me see… It would boost my sense of self-worth.’

‘For whose benefit?’

‘Why, mine of course.’

‘Just because it’s stylish?’

‘Yes.’

‘It wouldn’t work.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because stylishness is a belonging thing, and you’re not a belonger.’

‘I’m still human.’

‘Only just. You don’t walk with humans, you don’t talk with humans, you don’t have humans visiting you and saying “Oh my, Jeffrey, what a stylish sense you have in the matter of cafetieres. I wish I was as refined as you.” Do you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, there you are then.’

Point taken. The old cafetiere can stay. (The last one I had was white, by the way. Something untoward happened to it – don’t remember what – and now it’s one of the things I use to cover seedlings if there’s a frost due.)