I can't find my Rose-tinted Glasses

[neonlyte]

I've been away, you may have noticed, UK, Ireland, and Portugal - on holiday rather than my home base near Lisboa. With the UK election underway I've been reading way too many UK newspapers for my own good.

The press paints a stylised image of your country when you are on foreign shores tending toward sensationalism, exile removes the natural balance of living in the 'home' community. I've stuck with the so-called quality media, The Guardian, The Independent and The Observer; in recent years I find The Times to be little more than a Murdoch voice box and I'm struck in my travels by the profussion of Daily Mail newspapers proffered for sale on foreign shores, are they there as a warning to foreigners not to visit the UK? The racist tone of the Daily Mail astonishes and shames my citizenship: I'm wandering from the point.

Here is a brief list of memorable stories gleaned from the Press in UK election week:

- 15 year old boy beats up and rapes teacher on her second day at a new school
- 17 youths arrested, including a girl of 14, for beating and killing a Chinese restaurant owner who challenged their damaging of his car
- single mother of 2 young children charged with murder after kicking to death an elderly woman in an arguement over a parking space
- man arrested and charged with assault after challenging youths for damaging his car, he followed them to their school to report their behaviour, the teacher called the police after he pushed one of the boys
- youths arrested after setting fire to a vagrant and filming his burning on their mobile phones
- man recovers his stolen car in two hours after lying to the police that his young daughter was in the car when it was stolen (60 police and police helicopters mobilised to track down 'supposedly abducted child')

I could go on.

What struck me in all of this was the lack of any moral tone in any of the newspapers I read over the pending election and the type of society 'we' live in and the type of society 'we' desire. I suppose we reap what we sow, the general trend (in the UK) is toward self interest and away from social cohesion and probably explains why I am more comfortable living outside of the UK in a society that stills maintains a degree of social cohesion, family unity and cultural identity.

The other aspect that strikes me is the 'story telling', I sometimes wonder if the stories I try to write are credible, too far fetched, am I stretching at the boundaries of what is believable or do I (we) owe it to our readers to draw them way beyond the boundaries of the conventional / acceptable to compete with the escalating fiction of Real Life?

I'm musing - be interested in any comments.

 

[Rubyb]

Perhaps those glasses are hiding

I can't stand it when I watch/listen to the news and can't find mine. I hope yours are found as soon as you want them to be.

The other aspect that strikes me is the 'story telling', I sometimes wonder if the stories I try to write are credible, too far fetched, am I stretching at the boundaries of what is believable or do I (we) owe it to our readers to draw them way beyond the boundaries of the conventional / acceptable to compete with the escalating fiction of Real Life?

Excellent questions. The answers depend on the audience you've targeted.
Are you writing fact or fiction?

Many readers want to escape from their daily lives. Not drown in more of the horror of that they can see on the news.

Sometimes it's easier to compete by taking a reader to a simpler time and place or to a place where they want to be, rather than where they have to live.

Leave them satisfied. Give them what they can't see on the news.
* Solve the crime.
* Save the planet.
* Rescue those who need to be rescued.
* Punish the wicked.
* Let lovers fall and stay in love.
* ... and so on.

As for stretching at the boundaries of what is believable, if we're talking science fiction, horror or fantasy, go for it.

If we're talking about the common / moral sense of the average person or how they would act in any given situation, now that is a tough one. This is where most characters have been known to run away with the story.

 

[neonlyte]

The other aspect that strikes me is the 'story telling', I sometimes wonder if the stories I try to write are credible, too far fetched, am I stretching at the boundaries of what is believable or do I (we) owe it to our readers to draw them way beyond the boundaries of the conventional / acceptable to compete with the escalating fiction of Real Life?

Excellent questions. The answers depend on the audience you've targeted.
Are you writing fact or fiction?

Many readers want to escape from their daily lives. Not drown in more of the horror of that they can see on the news.

Sometimes it's easier to compete by taking a reader to a simpler time and place or to a place where they want to be, rather than where they have to live.

Leave them satisfied. Give them what they can't see on the news.
* Solve the crime.
* Save the planet.
* Rescue those who need to be rescued.
* Punish the wicked.
* Let lovers fall and stay in love.
* ... and so on.

As for stretching at the boundaries of what is believable, if we're talking science fiction, horror or fantasy, go for it.

If we're talking about the common / moral sense of the average person or how they would act in any given situation, now that is a tough one. This is where most characters have been known to run away with the story.

Good advice, though I keep reading the final line as:
This is where most characters have been known to run away from the story.

I'll continue to muse on the virtue of morality v's entertainment though I know I ought at least attempt to encompass both.

 

[gauchecritic]

I think it depends a whole lot on what it is that you want your story to convey Neon.

Some things a story can be aimed at: To illuminate, to educate, to moralize, to contrast, to escape. to entertain.

Obviously they are not exclusive aims because hopefully any aim you choose will at least entertain. Any aim that you have (assuming you have the skill to entertain which I know you do) will depend a lot on (Sher's phrase) what the reader brings to the tale.

So it seems that the reader you aim at, in order to moralize, educate etc has to have some similar 'quailities' of thinking with which to approach your tale.

That being said, you also have to take into account, in escapism that an American, an Aussie, a Hollish or German person reading your story will be reading about an Englishman (presumably) and will, from word one be in foreign territory.

So now we come back to suspension of disbelief, which is something that all readers must bring before they open the first page. (although from reported feedback, suspension is the last thing that some Lit. readers are willing to employ)

If you consider that 99% of the media are driven by profit then it is logical (what's another word for logical) to presume that what they produce (films, TV, articles plays etc) is what the public wants, however morally reprehensible or bankrupt you believe this makes any given society.

On the other hand, with books, a publisher's product has a vast and widely disparate conglomeration of separate parts which make up the whole.

So really, (except that it should probably include some sexuality) you can't stretch any ('literary') boundary so far that you won't have at least some readers on Lit.

If you want the largest readership write what they want to read, if you want satisfaction of the best piece of work you can achieve write what you want to write. Somewhere in the middle of those two will bring you 5s, awards and competition winners.

 

[neonlyte]

If you consider that 99% of the media are driven by profit then it is logical (what's another word for logical) to presume that what they produce (films, TV, articles plays etc) is what the public wants, however morally reprehensible or bankrupt you believe this makes any given society.

Pre-determined - in this context, would suit.

Essentially this is the nub of my musing. Media claim to give the public what it wants, we read and hear this claim repeatedly, presumably this is based solely upon sales, it is how The Sun sells more copies than The Independent and why Harry Potter outsells The Hollow Crown (Middle Age England - not Tolkien). In a sense a writer is hamstrung in competiton with the real world, can you imagine how a fictional plot of the invasion of Iraq would have played out with a publisher. Can you imagine a story plot around a young mother kicking to death an elderly woman over a car parking space - of course you can, but you probably wouldn't want to write it, few could in this era. Our focus has shifted to the instantaneous, the immediate gratification in visual or word imagery.

I tire of it all. I'm frustrated and angered by the display of personal selfishness that morally bankrupts society and dismayed that the 'media', the organs of information dissemination, lack the moral fibre to comment on the escalation of reprehensible acts of behaviour as if their only duty were to report them. And yet, and yet, they feel free to preach on the cost of doing business politically maintaining a level of influence they do not, in my opinion, earn by balanced arguement.

The best comment I heard last week, I think it was in a question to Blair about the minimum wage was "Would you wipe someone's arse for £4.75 per hour?"

Back to the story telling. Push the boundaries, keep it just within the bounds of credibility and hope the reader has left his prejudicsms in the sock drawer. I think that is what I try to do, that and entertain.

We've ended up with a Tory! The last bloke was Labour, an egotistical wanker, and I regret to say a Yorkshireman, but I still prefered him to the Tory.

 

[R. Richard]

The best advice I can give you is to never attempt to write the truth or anything based upon true events; no one will ever believe that kind of thing really happens.

JMHO.

 

[NoJo]

I've been away, you may have noticed, UK, Ireland, and Portugal - on holiday rather than my home base near Lisboa. With the UK election underway I've been reading way too many UK newspapers for my own good.

The press paints a stylised image of your country when you are on foreign shores tending toward sensationalism, exile removes the natural balance of living in the 'home' community. I've stuck with the so-called quality media, The Guardian, The Independent and The Observer; in recent years I find The Times to be little more than a Murdoch voice box and I'm struck in my travels by the profussion of Daily Mail newspapers proffered for sale on foreign shores, are they there as a warning to foreigners not to visit the UK? The racist tone of the Daily Mail astonishes and shames my citizenship: I'm wandering from the point.

Here is a brief list of memorable stories gleaned from the Press in UK election week:

- 15 year old boy beats up and rapes teacher on her second day at a new school
- 17 youths arrested, including a girl of 14, for beating and killing a Chinese restaurant owner who challenged their damaging of his car
- single mother of 2 young children charged with murder after kicking to death an elderly woman in an arguement over a parking space
- man arrested and charged with assault after challenging youths for damaging his car, he followed them to their school to report their behaviour, the teacher called the police after he pushed one of the boys
- youths arrested after setting fire to a vagrant and filming his burning on their mobile phones
- man recovers his stolen car in two hours after lying to the police that his young daughter was in the car when it was stolen (60 police and police helicopters mobilised to track down 'supposedly abducted child')

I could go on.

What struck me in all of this was the lack of any moral tone in any of the newspapers I read over the pending election and the type of society 'we' live in and the type of society 'we' desire. I suppose we reap what we sow, the general trend (in the UK) is toward self interest and away from social cohesion and probably explains why I am more comfortable living outside of the UK in a society that stills maintains a degree of social cohesion, family unity and cultural identity.

The other aspect that strikes me is the 'story telling', I sometimes wonder if the stories I try to write are credible, too far fetched, am I stretching at the boundaries of what is believable or do I (we) owe it to our readers to draw them way beyond the boundaries of the conventional / acceptable to compete with the escalating fiction of Real Life?

I'm musing - be interested in any comments.

The press in Britain is almost the converse of the US; over there the newspapers have a strong tradition of independence and fearless investigative journalism, while the TV news companies are more likely to toe the line.

I think that many countries in Europe are worse to live in if you're unfortunate enough to belong to a racial or religious minority. Personally I don't feel a very strong sense of community in London, but that's mainly because I'm in a cultural minority; I'd probably feel more at home in Paris or Greece, where it's more natural to sit around in cafes talking crap. But Greece has a history of antisemitism that puts me off. So does Portugal, for that matter. I've never once suffered from it in Britain, so here I stay.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

In the US, papers that publish those kinds of articles are known as tabloids, and are given as much respect as the Jerry Springer show and other instances of shock media. The British Press especially, while not exactly thre subject of ridicule, is the object of much bafflement: why does such a refined and educated public as you have in the UK love to wallow in the gutter when it comes to print news?

That's not to say that we're all lilly-white and noble over here. Tabloids are growing in popularity, but aside from such supermarket weeklys as the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News, the trend is recent and entirely attributable to Rupert Murdoch, who dishes news like it's slop for hogs. No one takes Murdoch seriously as a provider of real news.

Bill Clinton notwithstanding, the things the British press publishes about the Royals and other celebs makes most Americans turn away in embarrassment. The idea of having a cheesecake photo on page 3 of a major newspaper is just incredible to Americans. Obviously, your papers are more concerned with entertaining their readers than in reporting news. When you treat news as entertainment, you get those kinds of shock horror stories.

 

[LadyJeanne]

The press in Britain is almost the converse of the US; over there the newspapers have a strong tradition of independence and fearless investigative journalism, while the TV news companies are more likely to toe the line.

I might have agreed with you on this in the past, but certainly don't anymore. We've lost the independence and fearless investigative journalism in newspapers. Nothing could have been more evident of that than the rubber-stamping of anything the Bush administration had to say after 9/11, about WMDs and why we went to war in Iraq. Newspapers also did very little to investigate the lies, the half-truths, the misrepresetations, and everything else concerning the recent presidential election, as well as the previous one.

Journalists all over the place are plagiarizing, getting fired, and then writing books and going on talk-show circuits to talk about how their ambition and laziness got the better of them.

Readership of newspapers continues to decline. That may be why they take the easy route and simply report rather than investigate and expose. The papers also maintain consistent editorial viewpoints which affects their selection of stories to cover and how they report on those stories; readers don't buy the paper they don't agree with and don't read stories that contradict their own views.

As ownership of newspapers continues to be consolidated in the hands of a few, there is less and less independence in reporting, less and less investigation. When was the last time a reporter broke a scandal like Watergate?

When I moved to California, I was really struck by how easy it is to wear rose-colored glasses here. I didn't always agree with the conservative slant of the Chicago Tribune which I read front to back nearly every day, but the San Francisco Chronicle is crap. Their editorial slant is so liberal that they fail to cover many stories, cover them minimally, or fail to provide the opposing viewpoint, as though by ignoring dissenting opinions, they will go away.

 

[neonlyte]

I think that many countries in Europe are worse to live in if you're unfortunate enough to belong to a racial or religious minority. Personally I don't feel a very strong sense of community in London, but that's mainly because I'm in a cultural minority; I'd probably feel more at home in Paris or Greece, where it's more natural to sit around in cafes talking crap. But Greece has a history of antisemitism that puts me off. So does Portugal, for that matter. I've never once suffered from it in Britain, so here I stay.

Joe
I wouldn't want to give the impression that Portugal is a bigot free zone, far from it, the racialist attitudes of some of my friends shames me. As for Portugal's anti-semetic past, they would like to pretend it never existed, there is little by way of apology for the 16C treatment of the Jews and the forced conversion to New Christian, though I did see recently some contemporary (16C) engravings by a French artist recording the burning of the Jews at Praco do Comercio in the centre of Lisboa; these were dispalyed in a new gallery opened in the Museum of Lisboa though there was little by way of explanation / apology marking the travesty.

If you ever pass this way I would wish to take you to Belmonte, a town a couple of hundred kilometres from Lisboa where Jews took refuge after the Inquisition - they only emerged to acknowledge their faith in 1975 (after the Portuguese Revolution) and practised their faith behind closed doors and in underground synagogues for four hundred years.

I'm encouraged by the young on the streets here, their cameraderie, warmth and friendship spanning cultures and races in a way that does not occur so spontaneously in UK and contrast this with the sounds emanating from the wide screen TV's in the Algarve last weekend broadcasting English football with the oafish tribalistic roar of drink fuelled English football fans spilling onto the street. When Sporting Lisbon qualified for the UEFA Cup final on Thursday we had a good natured street party, fans were drunk on pleasure, not alcohol.

Of course the other reason I'm here is because it is so very easy to close my ears and to a degree, my eyes, to anything I do not wish to see. Buying a UK paper means a trip across the river, I ask myself, is it worth the swim?

 

[CharleyH]

I could go on.

What struck me in all of this was the lack of any moral tone in any of the newspapers I read over the pending election and the type of society 'we' live in and the type of society 'we' desire. I suppose we reap what we sow, the general trend (in the UK) is toward self interest and away from social cohesion and probably explains why I am more comfortable living outside of the UK in a society that stills maintains a degree of social cohesion, family unity and cultural identity.

The other aspect that strikes me is the 'story telling', I sometimes wonder if the stories I try to write are credible, too far fetched, am I stretching at the boundaries of what is believable or do I (we) owe it to our readers to draw them way beyond the boundaries of the conventional / acceptable to compete with the escalating fiction of Real Life?

I'm musing - be interested in any comments.

Interesting last question, yet tackling first statement. Is it surprising to you? What morality do the press have, really? In any situation and in any country. Certain things are prioritized, thats all, and the job of a journalist is to get to the heart of the nitty gritty, putting the morality aside. My take. Journalists have the most sadistic job on the planet. PR writers are second, and having been one? Well, I could tell you stories.

Aside from that, your interesting question. I think, and this is only my opinion, that it depends on the kind of writer that you are. Its like film (part of my BA) - there are formalists and realists. Realists tend to documentary, and yet, is the POV ever true? The POV is always askewed toward the one looking, which makes the view false in a way, and I think more false than fiction, which relies on the symbolic. In porn?

Well, I will go to fairy tales for a bit. Handed down, and eventually written down, did not actually paint a rosy disney picture. Fairy tales actually began in brothels, just an aside, and the Grimm Brothers original stories reflect more of real life than our watered down disney.

Disney and fantasy. Hmf.

Well, there is a division in parts of fantasy, too. One (as I know a certain someone here said to me) must go for the audience, Disney. The other is for you as a writer, and while this is a long and haphazard response (too many thoughts) I am sure he was right, and in my interpretation: he said Truth is a POV, credibility is a mere act of accuracy, and stretching the boundaries of the possible is what people desire most of all in their lives.

 

[Rubyb]

Well, there is a division in parts of fantasy, too. One (as I know a certain someone here said to me) must go for the audience, Disney. The other is for you as a writer, and while this is a long and haphazard response (too many thoughts) I am sure he was right, and in my interpretation: he said Truth is a POV, credibility is a mere act of accuracy, and stretching the boundaries of the possible is what people desire most of all in their lives.

Truth is a POV - great line.

And we all know that perception is reality.

When we decide to write for ourselves or to write for others, sometimes the two don't always intersect. Decisions, decisions.

I find by giving myself some guidelines to follow, then when a character goes off and does his/her own thing, it's okay. Cause the other characters are there to tell the complete story and balance out the evil from the good.

If credibility is a mere act of accuracy, and stretching the boundaries of the possible is what people desire most of all in their lives, then writing and reading great fiction is an excellent place to test those boundaries.

A personal pet peeve is when credibility is tested and boundaries are stretched under the guise of presenting fiction as fact. Oh, wait, that would be in many of those newpapers and news shows previsouly discussed. Grrr...

 

[CharleyH]

Thanks, it was more my own thought, and yet the horse is responsible for my ... in part intelligent thoughts ... Credit where due. He/she did make me think of this.

 

[neonlyte]

Readership of newspapers continues to decline. That may be why they take the easy route and simply report rather than investigate and expose. The papers also maintain consistent editorial viewpoints which affects their selection of stories to cover and how they report on those stories; readers don't buy the paper they don't agree with and don't read stories that contradict their own views.

Endorsed. How many go out of their way to seek out the contradictory POV? Few, very few. It is better to remain cossetted in the reflection of our own POV than seek the rational for why your beliefs are correct. Editors / owners are as guilty for the most part, journalists mostly subservient to the paymaster.

In the UK, the biggest election story outside of Iraq was Immigration. It is a topic that plays to the sypathies of the bigot yet none of these Englanders are willing to do the menial jobs undertaken by hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers who stuggle to survive on a minimum wage. My wife was in hospital in the UK recently, the ward was staffed by white nurses, and black orderlies, the black orderlies did the menial tasks, the bed pans, the changing of sheets, serving the food. One man on the ward was vocally distressed to have a black girl change his soiled bed. She never batted an eyelid, took his abuse, spoke quietly and firmly to him while she went about her task. None of the white nurses came to her assistance. Later in the day he tried to make an official complaint about the black orderlies treatment of him, claiming she'd left him lying in a soiled bed half the day - he did this after the white nurses changed shift, it was a calculated move. Fortunately my wife spoke up on the orderlies behalf, she'd heard from the adjoining bed exactly what had taken place. He ended up apologising, and the orderly, dignified as ever, told him he had nothing to apologise for.

We spoke with her, she was a lovely woman working twelve hour shifts for an agency earning £5.00 per hour to support her young family, in that ward she was an outcast.

Societies need to make extraordinary leaps to adjust. It is not that these things happen but that we continue to close our eyes and ears to the reality of the world we occupy. Changes happen at the fringe, it is a visible fringe that we see on our streets and in our media. We see other races dressed like us, shopping like us, driving cars like us, working jobs like us - what we don't see, what we never want to see, is the underclass, it is the foundation of our comfort zone and without their labour much of what we take for granted would crumble, and when idiots like Michael Howard start banging on about Immigration without paying credence to the immigrant underclass that provides the comfort we desire... well, it makes my blood boil. Michael Howard by the way is himself an immigrant, his family came to the UK around the time of WWII.

 

[neonlyte]

Interesting last question, yet tackling first statement. Is it surprising to you? What morality do the press have, really? In any situation and in any country. Certain things are prioritized, thats all, and the job of a journalist is to get to the heart of the nitty gritty, putting the morality aside. My take. Journalists have the most sadistic job on the planet. PR writers are second, and having been one? Well, I could tell you stories.

Yup... but it is not just that they put the morality to one side for the sake of telling the news, it is almost as if the onus is entirely upon the reader to take the moral message and unfortunately they are not always good at reading between the lines. We are very good at that with some things - the Indonesia disaster for example had all of us digging into our pockets, but remember back to Vietnam and the refugees, sure many countries took in tens of thousands but in the end, the concensous was 'no more' from nearly all nations. Can you imagine the furor if the UK had said we will accept 100,000 refugees from Indonesia? There was an almighty row over the handful we did accept not because we lacked compassion but 'politically' offering refuge was dynamite with an election less than a year away. We don't do the action out of heart felt conviction but out of fear of the ammunition we give to political opponents.

Aside from that, your interesting question. I think, and this is only my opinion, that it depends on the kind of writer that you are. Its like film (part of my BA) - there are formalists and realists. Realists tend to documentary, and yet, is the POV ever true? The POV is always askewed toward the one looking, which makes the view false in a way, and I think more false than fiction, which relies on the symbolic. In porn?

Nicely put.

Well, there is a division in parts of fantasy, too. One (as I know a certain someone here said to me) must go for the audience, Disney. The other is for you as a writer, and while this is a long and haphazard response (too many thoughts) I am sure he was right, and in my interpretation: he said Truth is a POV, credibility is a mere act of accuracy, and stretching the boundaries of the possible is what people desire most of all in their lives.

I like this - it gives me comfort. Thank you.

 

[DwayneDibley]

@neonlyte - very interesting thread and ideas, and I totally, totally agree with you!!

I think there are more people than ever emigrating from the UK at the moment, I suspect because they are just so disillusioned with the selfishness, pettiness, shallowness, and materialistic way that life seems to be going here. The stories you highlighted also show how bad things have gone - people getting arrested by the police for defending their rights and their property from yobs and morons. I don't know how it is in other countries, but in the UK the obsession with individual's human rights is impacting and ruining collective people's human rights.

I initially a few years ago did take the 'Daily Mail' view on immigration, but have recently changed my views. People in this country have indeed become very snobbish, and unwilling to take certain lower paid jobs that immigrants are more than happy to take up. Like when they helped rebuild the country after WWII, these people are actually essential to the running of the country now.

I work in healthcare, and also see a lot of immigrant nurses and carers, usually from African countries like Zimbabwe, and they do a sterling job. People in the UK all seem to just want to work in the media, become interior designers or have some high-flying city job, nursing in the UK is facing a crisis, as although there are people in nurse training, many 50something nurses are about to retire, and the NHS has more or less exhausted the supply of immigrant carers. But I digress.

With regards to storylines, you also have to look at the current success of films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy adaptations, which have been phenomenally successful. It seems these 'escapist' films harking back to another time, or the good old fashioned 'good vs evil' with good winning out in the end are the most successful at the box office. I personally think that the 'silent majority' are soon going to get fed up with the way things are, and there is some kind of protest or revolution against the current system soon as people get fed up of yobs getting free rein to do what they want, and the selfishness and materialism that pervades this country.

 

[NoJo]

Britain is still facing a serious identity crisis. Little more than 100 years ago, Britain ran the largest empire the world has ever known. London was the largest and wealthiest city in the world, by far.

A little over fifty years ago, Britain emerged financially wounded from the last Just War. We owed a huge debt to the United States; we also owed the allied victory in part to Stalin's Soviet Union, butChurchill was viscously anti-Stalin, not on moral grounds but on political grounds -- the atrocities and deaths Stalin was responsible for were not really publicly known at the time. So he created the Iron Curtain.

After a brief media-generated flurry in the 1960's, when Britain became the world focus in pop culture, the reality of modern Britain's reduced global status began to sink in during the ensuing decades.

Blair has continued the post war tradition of attempting to be a "bridge" between the U.S. and Continental Europe, running the risk of alienation from both of them.

London in particular feels far more like other European capitals than any city I've been to in the U.S.

Personally I feel what I have always felt about this place, it's a home as good as any, (but with too much miserable weather); it has a population mainly of pragmatic, tolerant people, who have an amazing sense of humour -- a sense of the absurd that baffles most foreigners. And it's still one of the world's most affluent places, where you can expect to live a long and reasonably healthy life.

I've just taken a seven mile walk through the layers of London, starting from the wooded heathland that coverd the area in prehistory, passing the tomb of Queen Boudicca, and down through the Regency suburbs of Primrose Hill, when the massive 18th century property boom took place, past the site of the water pump that once fed the typhoid slums of Soho, leading John Snow to discover the science of epidemiology. Then I sat oustide in the sun and watched the tourists while I drank my very decent espresso. Samuel Johnson would have enjoyed the walk as well as the coffee.