The wife and I have this Sunday morning ritual. We go to a place called Just Around the Corner and share a ‘coffee with waffles’ combo (70 Rs when we started, 95 now). We have stuck to this for at least two years now. (the wife just corrected me and said close to 3). I reckon we are talking of around 150 Sundays here.
There are things which go with the ritual. For me at least. One of them is reading the “Sunday Midday”. JATC keeps papers & mags but normally the lone Midday is taken by someone. The wife, gives me 5 Rs to buy my own copy, so that I don’t start the Sunday on a foul mood. (Some say this is so that I am not in a foul mood to cook lunch for her…but I attribute it to kinder feelings).
Ritual number 2 is having the waffles WITH the coffee…probably linked to growing up dunking Nice or Glucose biscuits in milk in an effort to drink it. Now, for the past 150 odd Sundays I would tell the JATC staff that I want my coffee WITH the waffles. There staff hasn’t changed over 150 years…nor has my request…the result hasn’t changed too.
The coffee would either come well before or well after the blessed waffles. For the first two and a half years I would rave and rant, snarl and growl…no actually those who know me would know that I would quitely seethe inside. But then things changed with age came a sense of resignation and now I have ticked coffee WITH waffles off the routine. Now like a quiet ‘prisoner of my own device’ I just eat what I get when I get it.
The third thing is not really a ritual. Its more a basic necessity which is in fact closer to the wife’s heart. She doesn’t like her waffles to be too crisp…which is a polite way of saying not burnt. Nor do I. Except I douse mine with honey, maple syrup and butter so it doesn’t taste so bad.
Anyway for the last few weeks we kept telling the staff while placing the order that we want our waffles to be soft.
And what do we get…by now you would have guessed it…a burnt, inedible, sandstone like waffle…which we promptly return and asked to them to redo it. And then they actually give a fairly decent tasting one.
All I’d like to say to my Sunday mates at JATC is ‘Guys, I guess this your ‘routine’ but can you start off by giving us the second batch?’