The Barista On The Beach

I am writing this to myself, as much as I am writing this to you. We all need a reminder of The Truth now and again. Me, more than most.

A picture I took of the waves just near where the seaside barista plies his trade every day.

If you’ll forgive me — I have to fetch the story from five years ago. I had just moved from Geneva back to Cape Town, crawling through the shards of a broken marriage. I came home from living abroad for almost six years to be in the shelter of my friends, to right the ship and regain some control of my life.

I spent the first few months house-sitting a mate’s place in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs as he was riding a motorcycle to Rwanda. Then, I rented a summer bungalow literally on the edge of Llandudno beach. Not because I was loaded, but because summer bungalows in Cape Town are very cheap in the gloriously miserable and wet winters of the Mother City.

During the day, I worked in the city, trying to scrape together a business from scratch. In the evenings I’d go back to someone’s dream destination, sit on the clammy porch, sipping on whiskey, listening to the roar of the tides in the dark. Occasionally the wet blanket above me would pull back and reveal glimpses of the Milky Way as it poured back into the ocean.

Just after sunrise, I’d get up, fire up my rusty old ’72 Citroën DS and glide back into…