All Hail the Saint of Coffee Brewers

All Hail the Saint of Coffee Brewers / David West

Picture if you can his workspace. There is an L-shaped desk in a corner of the room. Starting from left there is a two-drawer filing cabinet, on top of which sits a stack of three wire-mesh filing trays, all overloaded. Beside them is a binocular case. The binoculars themselves are on top of a cabinet in the living room, near the front door, where he has a view of the harbour. On the left side of the desk there is a stack of four notebooks, different sizes for different purposes. Next to these are the papers he is working on at the moment: a draft of a chapter of his novel;  a short story waiting for a final read-through; an empty coffee cup; a ruler; the left-side speaker plugged into his computer. In front of him is his computer keyboard on a slide-out tray and his laptop computer, connected to a 21-inch monitor on the desk. Beside this, on the right, is a mouse. To the right of that, at the rear, is the second speaker. Further to the right is a clutter of pens, pencils, markers in a small open box, a tray holding 23 business cards, a dead computer mouse, a lamp (not switched on), a stapler and a hole punch. On the wall to his right are three photographs, one above the other: at the bottom is a picture of his two children, pre-teen when the photo was taken; above that his grand-daughter, aged three, lying on the floor staring at the camera; above this the largest picture: himself standing on the front steps of a house with his arms around his two children, now teens, the boy on his right, the girl on his left. Tucked into the frame of this photo, in the lower left corner, is a photo of himself, older now, less hair, with his daughter, just before she boards an aeroplane on her first solo overseas expedition. 

A year ago, after his accident, when he first started writing, he simply sat down at his desk, turned the computer on, opened a file, and started writing. When he ran out of things to say, or didn’t know what should happen next, he simply stood up and walked away: into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee; or outside and down the steps to the bottom garden; or into the living room to stare at the view across the harbour, until a new idea came to him and he went back to the keyboard and played with the idea until it took shape – the right words in the right order that said what he thought he wanted to say. Then he would let the writing sit for a day or two, or a week or more, and come back to it when he felt ready and able to review revise rewrite. Often he discovered at that point that his writing said nothing, or rambled and roamed and was full of scattered and unrelated thoughts, and he realised he had no memory of what he might have been wanting to say when he had first sat down in front of the blank screen and started typing.

He talked to a friend about this; a friend who graduated from a writing course; a friend who is a writer, who explained that routine and ritual play a big part in his writing life. The friend said he would be happy to describe his routine, but would not describe the rituals. They are private, he said, and you have to find your own, and own them. But perhaps I can help you if you tell me your routine. 

So, he tells his friend about his usual day. He wakes up about 7am without the help of an alarm; he puts a dressing gown on, goes to the toilet, washes his hands, splashes his face, walks through the living room and into the kitchen, where he fills a kettle with water, switches it on; puts three desert spoons of coffee beans in the grinder, switches it on, empties the ground beans into the coffee plunger. Walks back through the house into his study, which is also his bedroom, takes his laptop off the desk and puts it on his bed, swallows the pills he has to take on an empty stomach and takes two puffs on his asthma preventer inhaler, and returns to the kitchen, where the kettle is about to come to the boil. He pours the water into the plunger, and sets the timer on the microwave oven for 3 minutes and 33 seconds. He then takes the clean dishes from the drying rack where they have been sitting all night, and puts them back in their correct places: cupboards, drawers, shelves and cubby holes. By this time the 3 minutes and 33 seconds is up and the timer is beeping at him. He turns the beeper off, plunges the coffee, takes a 175mm cup from the shelf above the plunger, and two-thirds fills it with coffee. He takes the cup through to the bedroom, adjusts his pillows so he can sit up to drink his coffee and use the laptop, which he places on his knees on top of a foam rubber pad he keeps on the second shelf of the cabinet beside his bed. He checks his emails, deletes the spam and the advertisements and appeals that say just a small donation will go a long way, and settles in to read his daily news feeds: BBC, Reuters and The Guardian for overseas news; two national independent news services, and three independent sources that comment on the news of the day.

He finishes his coffee, gets out of bed, shuts the computer down and puts it back on his desk, plugs it in to recharge the battery, takes the empty cup into the kitchen, rinses it and puts it on the draining board, and walks back into the bathroom, where he takes of his pyjamas, washes his face, his armpits and his crotch. Dries himself, returns to his bedroom, where he puts his pyjamas under his pillow and dresses in the clothes he laid out the previous evening, arranged in the order that he likes to put them on. He then takes the rest of his prescription medications, and goes back to the kitchen, where he takes his home-made muesli from the pantry, the coconut water and yogurt from the fridge, fetches a banana from the fruit bowl on the sideboard in the dining room, returns to the kitchen, where he takes a small soup bowl from the kitchen crockery cupboard, and a desert spoon from the top drawer under the kitchen bench. He measures out a cup of the muesli and puts it in the bowl, slices the banana and places the slices on top of the muesli, pours just enough coconut water to cover the muesli in the bowl, and tops it with a spoonful of yogurt. He puts the coconut water and yogurt back in the fridge, takes the bowl into the dining room, and sits in the chair that he always sits in, facing the window looking west over the harbour, and eats his breakfast. Then he goes back into the kitchen, rinses the bowl and the spoon, and puts them on the bench to be washed later.

He then goes through to the bathroom, cleans his teeth and returns to his room, where he puts on a pair of shoes and a warm jacket (if he thinks he needs it)  and sets out on a 5 kilometre walk around the small town he lives in, following the same route every day.

When he gets home, he puts another cup of coffee in the microwave for 60 seconds on medium, waits for the ping, retrieves the cup, goes to his room, and settles down to write, he tells his friend.

“If that’s not a ritual, then what is?” he asks.

“I would call that a routine,” his friend says. “I think, personally, that a ritual should have an element of religion or spirituality. It should relate in some way to the task or ceremony you are about to perform. Am I right if I say you are looking for something that relates specifically to your writing and is not religious or spiritual?”

 “Yes. Something that will clear my mind and help me focus on the writing in front of me. With a feeling of joy. Something I can say or do after I have completed my routine and before I sit down to write.”

“You seem to drink a lot of coffee in the morning. Why don’t you simply give thanks to the Coffee God while you wait for your computer to start up?”

“The coffee god?”

“Yes. Well, he’s a Saint rather than a god. Saint Drogo of Sebourg. He’s actually the patron saint of coffee brewers, but that shouldn’t matter.”

“No, it won’t,” he says. “I think I can work with that.”

He thanks his friend for his patience and time. 

“May Drogo be forever with us,” he says, as he leaves the house.