fallen golden leaves

The coffee made fresh from a monstrous machine in the service area of the café in the ground floor of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the university campus of the Munich Technical University is fantastic. The barristo person with the self confident act knows how to make his coffee, pouring the milk with care to produce patterns on the surface of the drinks for those that take milk in their coffee. He puts on a high squeaky voice, perhaps he wants to make people laugh.
Nobody seems to be laughing at this.

The large cup of black, non milk, coffee in hand find the way to one of the high round  tables with high stools before them. Put down the full cup with care, but still a small amount of coffee swills over the rim into the saucer. Look out at the trees, the near ones are bare branches now, a few of the ones farther back still have a thin scattering of golden leaves on their lower branches. Look around , the walls of the café are glass, there is a view over all of the modern buildings of the campus, there where sunflowers used to grow twenty years ago.
This space is all grey stone, concrete, asphalt and glass now. It is so civilized, still think back over the fields with the thousands of yellow sunflowers that the farmers used to grow there. They grew them for their oil, probably.

The coffee man from the café approaches, a plate with the now-hot panini that had been ordered with the coffee in his hands. He puts it down on the round table beside the sloppy saucer and says "Los Paninos".
So say gracias in reply, even while thinking that it should be grazie for a panino. Obrigado would be nice, what is the Portuguese equivalent of a panino?


Read the account of Daedalus in the round tower, with Mulligan, the Englishman and the milk delivery. All the hundreds of references hidden in the text, the description of slights, the purchase of milk and the necessary ventilation after the preparation of breakfast.
Read for fifteen minutes, doubling back, rereading, trying to make a picture of what was being described.

Look up, there is a quiet spoken young woman with long red hear, a gentle pale face and a grey duffel jacket at one of the tables with her back to the window. It fits the reading material, and John Hinde would have loved it had there been a pile of turf in the background. Gaelic would suit her, but she is so quiet no sound of her voice comes across to the table.

Finish the coffee, stack the paninio plate and the coffee saucer, put the serviette into the empty cup and take the whole lot back to the used crockery stand. Walk out through the cafe, go down the stairwell and leave by the little side door there. Think of the mornings difficulties with the computer, and then there is the woman from the information techology department. Say the greetings, talk about the systems, and continue the walk through the grounds of the university.
There is the noise of a petrol engine driven portable blower in the background, a gardener is blowing the fallen golden leaves into a heap for disposal.