It is Thursday morning, and I sit in the coffee shop attached to a Sainsburys supermarket reading George Monbiot’s “Age of Consent”. The quiet burble of music seems to come and go like a tide, interspersed with the chinking of mugs and chatter of a group of senior shoppers discussing the news. On the table in front of the low, burgundy leatherette sofa sits a wide brimmed mug of coffee, from which I occasionally sip. Reading comes easily in this environment, as do new ideas – today I wrote the following:

“The property market is attaching us to enforced work, solely to buy property. We are chained to the system by the desire to own property regardless of cost, so we will never escape the system all the time we need to earn and borrow.”

Not exactly revolutionary, but I would not have thought of it had the conditions not been just right, and it’s just one thought in a stream of many.

I’ve been working off my own initiative for 4 days now. I certainly don’t have the time I had expected, with walking the children to school and picking them up afterwards, keeping the house in order, picking up a few things from the shops, and checking the lists of blog feeds that keep me up to date with the outside world (it’s a lonely life). But regardless of that, I need my reading time and morning cup of coffee somewhere other than my house – it’s a Coffee Shop Thing.

Coffee shops – not the infamous Amsterdam versions – and “Coffee Houses” have certainly come a long way since the elite establishments of 17th century Europe that led to, among other things, the foundation of both Lloyds of London and the London Stock Exchange, and also a great many political and philosophical ideas. It is said that the French Revolution was plotted in the coffee houses of Paris, and Samuel Pepys was awed by the “the most ingenious, and smart [debate], that I ever heard, or expect to hear” from the coffee houses of London.

Now we pop into Starbucks with wireless laptops, connect to the rest of the world, and…well, what exactly?

I say coffee shops have come a long way, in terms of convenience, choice and internet access, but whether they still contribute to political and social change is another matter. The potential is certainly there and I, for one, intend to make the most of them. It’s a strange thought, but when you next go into a coffee shop take a look around, and consider whether the person reading in the corner or tapping away on their Blackberry is the catalyst for a new revolution.

Or maybe they’re just waiting for a friend.

Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.reduce3.com
And Coffee Shop Revolutionary ;-)