Once upon a time I would have cringed if a barista knew my order. But I’m learning to love that I’m a regular | Emma Beddington
WDuring our month long trip to Venice we went to the same cafe almost every day. It was the same as my last trip, with the windows full of dry-looking cookies, slices of Barbie pink nougat, and souvenir tins overlooking Rialto, while pigeons circled the door as if daring each other to enter. Inside was a display case of pastries, a shelf of never-touched appetizers, and an overworked coffee maker behind a high counter. It is always busy: pensioners, dog walkers, office workers, the postman, hesitant tourists and the bravest pigeons, looking for crumbs.
I recognized the staff, but they clearly didn’t recognize me, with 2.1 million tourists trudging past every year. But gradually we infiltrated the morning ecosystem and after ten days the tall man operating the machine started saying: “Normal and lungo?” when we reached the front of the coffee crush. In week three, on a particularly busy morning, he caught my attention as I stood in line and gestured to our already brewed coffee waiting at the counter. As I continued to claim them, I felt like, I don’t know, George Clooney? Or at least a pigeon with recognizable markings that they don’t bother to kick out. It was a special moment: the gift of a momentary sense of connection.
It made me reflect on my feelings about the “ordinary” experience at home, which are historically ambivalent. I long for connection in my life of lonely staring at the screen, and short conversations when I visit my usual haunts usually feel like bright little gifts. Research shows that weak ties – our ties to the people we see and interact with minimally – make us happier. But there are days when everything in my life is a dumpster fire, I’m spotty, unshowered and cranky; when I need cake but can’t handle pleasantries. Other times there’s not even anything wrong – I’m just inhabited by a mutinous, somewhat adolescent desire not to be known. There was a nice piece to it in the New York Times last year about becoming a regular as an antidote to loneliness, but one line about the author’s ice cream shop froze my blood: “He threw aside his broom and sat across from me to ask what I was writing.” Argh! To flee!
It’s not that I believe that a few minutes’ boring conversation with me is a reward to give or remember. It’s more that I sometimes get the panicky feeling that both parties are becoming entangled in an inescapable web of social obligations. I don’t think I’m the only one who occasionally experiences a kind of dizziness when weak ties threaten to become stronger. Isn’t there a very British urban horror story about a famous stranger who you nod with while on the road for years and then one day strikes up a conversation, which means you then have to get up an hour earlier to avoid them? We move to big cities to keep our ties weaker than water, to reinvent ourselves without anyone saying, “Oh, are you drinking macchiatos now?” or, “You look nice today!” The fact that 50 pubs a month in England and Wales closed in the first half of this year suggests that fewer of us are looking for a place where everyone knows your name.
But I think I’m gradually letting go of my ambivalence. Returning to my hometown was a kind of acceptance of the mixed blessing of fame, because if you live somewhere small enough, you’re a regular everywhere. Being here has made me appreciate frequent connections more – the pleasure of places where everyone at least knows your order. Yes, that also means accepting that you are known for being extremely predictable, cake-dependent, often unclear and unwashed, and occasionally having a chat when you least feel like it. But I have come to understand that life is like being trapped – or held – in a web of inescapable social obligations.
In Venice it was I who tried to strengthen the weak bond: on my birthday I announced that I “cinquanta Ogi” (50 today) and the cafe staff congratulated me with polite bewilderment and then ignored me completely. They spent the rest of the trip talking to me about nothing but coffee and paying because I’m not really a regular there. But I’m here, and that’s quite nice.