One should fall in love with a Café Owner, at least once in a lifetime. 

There should be a slow waft of connection, with dangling conversations about dogs, the environment, and grades of coffee bean. 

One must, as the trembling sails of desire unfurl, remain unremittingly positive, seated with your best side facing the Love Object. Ensure that, when flicking hair under dappled light conditions, no strand departs, in slow motion, to land in one’s tepid coffee cup. 

As you sip, consider writing some gay Thank You cards you’ve bulk-purchased in IKEA, flamboyantly addressing them to friends in exotic places, as he passes by to refill. Underline Uganda with one of those confident Z-scrawls your father used to use. 

One should be witty in a Meg Ryan sort of way – charming, and preternaturally chipper for the time of day. Life is so, so good. LOLs. 

As your Café love-boat chugs to shore, you must low-giggle at the silliness of fate. Yes. You are ready to enter the high-altitude Land of Latte Lust.

The inciting incident is so beautifully simple. A free coffee, inched towards your grip. Its warmth brightens the heart of darkness which is this week’s love life. Is this happening? Can my soul be thus awakened? Is there a perfection more perfect than this sliding, Formica happening?  

Oh no. No, you say. No. 

As it is Yes. 

And so, you discover that a part of each of us is for sale for the price of a Skinny. He is an Aztec god, after all. You are here for ultimate sacrifice. 

And it won’t last, alas. 

Love affairs with Café Owners are a CV rite of passage, with shades of Grey and Binchy colouring the enterprise. 

Naturally, the chap is a pain in the arse. 

He smells of stale pain au chocolat and carries a spare damper in his front pocket. Your god is a sour-puss, arising at 5h45am, growling on the way to a loud, morning splash. 

As one’s allotted hour of Love progresses, you learn he dislikes half of his suppliers and resents most of his customers. And because running from Revenue is a drag, he nourishes himself on five-star Trip Advisor reviews, peppered with a line of sparkle in the disabled toilet. 

The tock of love ticks to a fade, before a week is out. 

But let there be neither gnashing nor grinding. Love becomes true when the loving departs. 

Once you lose the whiff of plastic lids from your sheets and mislay that cutesy café-teaspoon on a picnic with your friend from Kampala, you both can return home. Now, with grace, pour yourselves a coffee, and settle in to what matters most: exchanging one’s memories of Caffeinated Love.