I pop in to hospital several times each week to avail myself of their free coffee. My mum works as a theatre nurse there and their coffee is provided as a “community service”. It’s a Dutch brand – Douwe Egberts – and is more than tolerable, especially by American standards. Mostly it is an uneventful affair. I pop in, pour myself a 12-ounce-cup, add sugar and milk and then drive off to my next destination. Most often there is no one there. This Tuesday, however, I was subjected to something truly horrifying. I heard a woman speaking. It wasn’t a normal fashion of speech. It was a most hideous, discordant Sarf Lon’on. My ears hadn’t been assaulted in such a cold-blooded way since I didn’t pay enough attention and had to change trains at Lewisham! She stank. She did not stink of body odour, rather of a generous application of cheap perfume.
I turned around and faced it – the most hellish of sights. An otherwise underwhelming Sarf Lon’oner with a spray tan that looked of a carrot’s daughter from an illicit affair. She was covered in hideous East Los Angeles-style tattoos. She was a Sarf Lon’on chola – a Mexican/Chicano subclass that combines the worst of the chav with Mexican slum “culture”. After making a mess of the room, she and her cholo boyfriend – a fair dinkum Mexican – left. They may have gone, but the scars remain burnt into my mind.
Boadicea's Chariot 
How should one pronounce rhe Dutch beverage? Is it ‘dover’? I can handle the eg, bert.
Doo-ve with the “oo” being pronounced like “book”.
A 12-ounce-cup??? WTF is that then? You’ve obviously been in Septicland far too long and need to get out right now before your perceptions become irreparably damaged.
OZ
Oz: In Planet ‘Murca cups hold 12 ounces, 16 ounces and 20 ounces. Odd, but I’ll take even ‘Murca’s deformations of English measures over the Froggish variety!
Chris: Sure that should be ‘Doo-we’. I thought a Dutch W was the same as English. 🙂 It is good coffee though.
Hello Christopher. Thank you for your earlier concern. I am back on Earth.
The generic term for that awful smell is cologne. Wondering why you didn’t use that word. Hmm. As for coffee, while not being an Englishman in New York or anywhere for that matter, I’m with Sting on this one.
“I don’t drink coffee I take tea, my dear”
American beverage containers are obscene. Small bucket, middling bucket and horse bucket!
I always insist on a proper cup and saucer if having coffee anywhere.
I deplore this business of taking out and consuming food and drink on the street.
Disgusting and low class one of the most unappealing aspects of USA culture..
FEEG: the Dutch “W” is rather more like the Hunnish!
TR: I wrote this post quickly. Perfume, cologne, eau de brothel. Of the three, “eau de brothel” is perhaps aptest. They offer tea, but it is this wretched American brand that is good for little more than staining paper. It’s certainly no more fit for human consumption than an American lager.
CO: Take-away coffee is hardly limited to the USA. As it is gratis it would be in poor taste to demand a porcelain cup. Australia, Canada, Hunland, etc. are all guilty of serving coffee in similar containers.
South of France, early ’90s, tourist shop with local wares, hand-written labels. I saw ‘eau de mouton’ and had to laugh. It was ‘eau de Menton’…..😳
I’d rather pay, sit down and have a cup of saucer!
Rather like ‘eau de brothel’, very apt for some of the reeks that purport to be perfume.
“Stinks like a whore’s garret” is another expression that comes to mind.
CO: At my favourite local coffee shop they serve me only Swedish, Brazilian, Portuguese or Italian coffee with a proper cup and saucer. I have a caffeine addiction and am frequently late so I tolerate lower standards on occasion.
Do you think that a 1950s-vintage pearl necklace is an appropriate gift for Danish-type chum’s mum?