When did chai latte enter my life as a favourite thing? Who invented the idea, I wonder?
Spike and I met Sharon at
Sappho Books on Glebe Point Road. We sat in the cafe at the rear of the building, in the section where second-hand science fiction and fantasy paperback novels are stacked from floor to ceiling. Sharon and Spike drank coffee of various types. I drank Chai Latte, my currently favourite hot beverage. We roamed inattentively over the weird and wonderful landscapes lurking behind the gloriously coloured, sometimes ridiculous, covers before us.
There is a lot of Brian Herbert on those shelves, which should surprise no one really; the Dune trilogy was losing its way by the middle of the second book, while Frank was still with us. It became simply silly when the son took over. Money for old rope, if you ask me. Stephen Donaldson too. It seems we may have become bored with Thomas Covenant who, when I first heard mention of him (in 1980 or thereabouts during a meeting with that National Organisation Of Labour Students national organiser, the reptile John Dennis) seemed like an interesting charcter. Spike bought five novels, most of which (I think) fit somewhere in the many and varied series of multi-volume tales of other worlds in galaxies far away, a long time ago. I looked for Wuthering Heights and The Monkey's Mask but neither were available. We bought them next door in Glebe Books, new of course.
Now I think of it, it was Halimah who introduced me to Chai when we worked together for the Physical Disability Council of NSW. She was mildly astonished that I'd never heard of the drink so she took our tea pot from the office kitchen and walked two blocks from the St Helen's Community Centre to a cafe noted for decent Chai. Upon her return, Halimah and I sat on the lawn drinking Chai in the sun like refugees from the days of the Raj.
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