My father spent a lot of his time engaging with customers and would enter into in depth conversations with them about their coffee. They would go away enthralled by a conversation that sometime extended to the history of coffee and coffee drinking in general.
One of the things I had to get used to was the look of sheer disappointment on the faces of some customers when they found me and not my father on duty. Sometimes a very expressive “Oh” would extend to “Oh, isn’t there anybody else here?”
This wasn’t the best of starts, but with a few exceptions they gave me a chance and warmed to me a little as the transaction progressed. I was keen, they could see that I knew where everything was and I responded quickly.
To establish relationship, some would recount to me how well they knew my father, they had no idea I was his son, to them I was just a young new face. They could come up with the most exaggerated stories about my father.
Some of them were bizarre, for example one was that he had once had a career as a jockey. As a young man he had served in The Royal Horse Artillery during the first world war so he had ridden, but never as a jockey!! The stories extended to my mother describing her as a one-time very gad-about socialite. Anyone who knew my mother would find this preposterous, she was very supportive of my father and quite retiring, never a gad-about.
The wilder of these stories bothered me somewhat and I resolved to tell my father about them. I caught him just before he was leaving the shop for the bank. To my surprise he roared with laughter, clapped me on the shoulder, jammed his bowler hat on and went off to the bank with the previous days takings still laughing. So, I duly took note and just listened to the stories saying “Really” in what I hoped was a very impressed manner. Before they left customers would confidentially lean towards me over the counter and confide to me that they were in possession of information, that they knew my father’s favourite coffee.