Coffee power

The old woman on the roof made her coffee after a bad night...

Mrs Kipling enjoyed the simple short ceremony of preparing a coffee in her old, blackened Mokka pot. She had never found a better way to start the day. The smell of coffee never failed to hug the air. It would own the room, the whole tiny flat. It could breathe a sense of soft familiarity into a new day that was still unannounced, whether the day was good or bad, whether it would bring laughter or tears, the scent of coffee beans warmed the heart to prepare it for what might be.

She had started every day that way for many, many years. And she smiled. She wasn’t afraid that it really was years of tradition, or that that meant she was getting on, she wasn’t afraid of old age. Not at all. Old age came with wisdom and knowledge for starters and among other things, coffee making finesse. Especially in her case.

Within minutes a faint smell of the coffee filled the room and began to bring a sense of order and sanity back to the morning after the violent storm, as it started to boil on the stove. The coffee pot heated some more and high-pressure vapour started to pump pure, invisible coffee beans into the air and with it, the storm lost a little of its tumultuous grasp on the start of the day.

The church clock bell broke the silence and struck seven times. Then a return to the stillness and the heavenly smell of baking combined with the smell of her coffee. She breathed in deep and smiled. The sandstone tower now stood faint and silent on a grey sky. Towards the coast the sky was whiter. She could just see the vague outline of the lighthouse.

She hoped the storm had left little damage. These days the storms were increasingly fierce. You could never be sure how it would hit the farm. For sure soon it would all dry fast enough but for now it was too slippery on the ice to dare walk out across the terrace. She would have loved to look out across the fields, across an expanse of green vines full of fruit in a stripy summer green, dusted probably, with the remains of the ice fall.

At least in the penetrating sun the deckchairs would dry by midday, catching the roof top breeze. Hopefully the cat would be back by the evening. She hoped its ear would be alright and got another fig from the box. She would check when she saw him. What else could she do?

This is an excerpt from the third chapter of Cat Snitch.

icy grey start to the day by Pipp