The Coffee Shop

The PE Coffee Crawl earned its name last Thursday.  The plan was to meet at Victoria Tea House for the Crawl.  We arrived at the Richmond Hill shop only to find it closed for the duration of the school holidays.  Now, I served on a month long Federal Court case in NY about ten years ago, and it was easier for the 12 jurors to come to consensus on a total of 12 counts against three defendants than it was for 13 Coffee Crawlers (I think Margaret must have been #13) to decide on another shop to visit.  Finally we decided and off we went to Wezandla in Central.  Once there, we found all the municipal parking lots to be full due to a conference/convention that was being held nearby.  Well, much to the distress of one of the attendants we held a confab right in the middle of his lot to decide on yet another coffee chop.

With this dubious start to the day we thought to just throw in the towel (I imagine Margaret wishes we would have), but the Crawl must go on....!  So, off our convoy crawled to The Coffee Shop (really, that's the name of it... brilliant!) just a short distance away at 7 Bird St. (it's all in the name) in Central.  Given what kind of morning we'd had up to this point The Coffee Shop had two things going for it: 1) it was open and 2) there were places to park.  Once assembled at the shop we all decided that, since it was such as beautiful day, we'd  take advantage of the outside seating (yet another decision Margaret would soon regret).

The Coffee Shop has been owned and operated by Willem and Adel van Rensburg for 13 years.  Willem especially likes Masterton's Sweet Italian Blend coffee and so he uses it in all of the shop's coffee beverages.  This Bird Street shop is open Mon-Fri, 8:30-5 offering breakfast/lunch/cakes.  Willem and Adel also open the shop on weekends for special functions, and they cater anytime for off-site events.  The Coffee Shop seats about 60 people, 40 inside and 20 outside on a nice tree-shaded patio (perhaps Margaret should have sat inside!)

This Week's Crawlers
Colleen, Sylvia, Gail, Stella, Beryl, Beth, Nomusa,
Margearet, Blessing, Fran, Keith, Eugene

Meet the owners and our Waitress
Adel, Willem, Leanne

Aside from the numerously aforementioned Margaret Zoetmulder, those joining me on Thursday's Crawl included Colleen Le Roux, Eugene Olivier, Fran and Keith de Beer, Beth Vieira, Stella and Beryl Dawson, Sylvia Mynhardt, Gail Darne, and Nomusa and Blessing Nkomo.  Welcome to first time Crawlers, Eugene and Blessing! 

Our Barista
Willem

After taking some pics I spent my Crawl time in a fairly deep discussion with Colleen, Eugene and Sylvia about life, death, faith and..... cochineal extract.  Yeah, that last bit I had to throw in just to lighten things up.  I heard on both BBC and CNN recently that some Starbuck's customers are miffed about the fact that the coffee shop chain uses the red-colored extract from the cochineal insect as coloring in its Strawberry Smoothie/Shake!  My cochineal story did lighten up the mood at my end of the table, but there's nothing like a bird dropping a load on someone to get a party going!  In this case it was Margaret who was the lucky recipient of said dropping.  Unfortunately for Margaret in her pink shirt, her bird hadn't been munching on cochineal but rather something blue which she (reported later) had a heck of a time getting out in the wash.  As Keith said in response to the whole incident, "The blue bird of happiness dropped his load on the oldest bird at the Bird St.Coffee Shop." 

I'm ending this post with a quote from one of my favorite movies, Forrest Gump, "Life is like a box of chocolates.... you never know what you're going to get."  Truer words have never been said, right, Margaret?

~Thank you to Willem, Adel and our waitress Leanne
~Happy Easter to All
~Happy Birthday to my nephew, Eric (April 6)

Until next week,

Ellen