Caffeine hurts, Caffeine drains you, you look nervous. I had heard it all.

Gazing at the infinite Coffee lovers’ options at my favourite massive supermarket,  and with time leaking between my nervous fingers, I grabbed it.

A jar of decaffeinated coffee.

” I don’t believe it would be on the shelves if it were bad for you” I said to myself.

In twenty four hours I  were to find out.

Because it was only early afternoon on Sunday I packed some goodies to last me til Monday and decided to spend the rest of my week-end decluttering, then reading my vampire novel… and Drinking Decaff.

I even wrote on my smartphone calendar a “good news note” about the new change.

Halfway through chapter six of my novel I realised I was getting a headache and strained eyes, felt drowsy and couldn’t take anything in.

“I will take a bath tomorrow before work”. I forgot to mark the page in my novel. Zzzzz……

Thank goodness I use a loud Alarm Clock, my good old alarm clock from the eighties, which followed me around the world, through six boyfriends and three redundancies- because I was having a nightmare about London getting flooded with Coffee, and people escaping in huge paper cups and rowing with teaspoons.

I found the bath too hot so I made it a bathspresso. 

Very proud of drinking Decaff, but Heck, where’s that Buzz?!

“I’ll get through this...”

Work is just three blocks away, but on my way I stopped at the ATM. After a seven people queue, I entered my PIN number wrong three times.  Card swallowed. Because I have another pair of cards I just walked away thinking “I ‘ll pay my rent via direct debit like Sasha rightly tells me to”.

We can do this. Even if I’m not quite sure who “we” is, but I needed some back-up then.

I had never noticed there’s a Decaff option at the office coffee machine. Stubborn me.

A call. My neighbour Ted yelling. Oh no, I forgot to turn off the hot water tap after my bath! And we were not insured. ” We” again?

Luckily my boss is understanding and I usually don’t call in for too many stickies- so I grabbed my bag and made my way to the bus stop, as Ted was telling me he had recently refurbished his studio flat. So time wasn’t on my side.

“That ‘s a new nice building they’ve just built there!”  This bus was unusually empty so I took a seat and fell asleep while looking outside the window. ” We” weren’t even aware it was the wrong bus.

“Driver! Please let me off! I’ve got a leak at home and am on the wrong bus!”

“Sorry Madame, I  cannot let you off til the next stop. ”

“We’ll get over this Stella”. Was I going mad talking to myself, this time out loud?

As I looked right, Simon was there, pressing the emergency button that opens the door, and pulled me out by the hand.

Simon was a summer camp teenage love from Colombia who I had met in the Alpes.

” I still keep all your letters in chocolate box, You look great, just a little sleepy”. He kissed me confidently.  ” Now where ‘s your flat? I will steal a couple of bikes to get there, then we can dump them in front of the Police station like we used to, remember? ”

“We do. I mean- I do”

“Do you still have that alarm clock we used to meet up in the stables at 4 AM?”

I hadn’t realised how far we were from home- I must have really dozed off on that bus. That lucky bus!

Now all I wanted was a double coffee, gaze into Simon eyes and hear his stories.

I don’t know by which exact magic art he happened to have some Colombian Roasted coffee, feather dream-catchers and cafe creme cigarellos. But before there was going to be some fifth gear love making, while being interrupted by Ted the angry neighbour who was still waiting for me to close the tap!

The End.