Being cool

Spotted this weekend in a supplement to my newspaper - a feature about working from home. This was illustrated with a picture of a young woman with a coffee (possibly a latte, she looked the type) sitting crossed-legged in bed working on her laptop. No matter how I angled the magazine, I could not peek down her vest-top. This has been a constant frustration ever since I became aware of a) women and b) just how sexy vests are - cf Ripley about to kick alien ass in 'Aliens'. Vest, gaffa-taping guns together...I'm surprised that the backs of cinema seats throughout Britain in the 80's were not doused in spontaneous eruptions of teenage lust. Possibly they were and there was a cover-up. I sincerely hope that the cover-up in question involved sterilising fluids.

Now, it could well be that this woman owned a porn site, and was working a specific section of the market that catered for men wanting to watch women in argyle socks and vests drinking coffee - and Christ knows society is ready/sick enough for that - but being the nerd that I was, all I could think was OVERHEAT!

That's right, sit your laptop down on anything other than some sort of naturally non-conductive surface, like a formica table at the Cafe Montmarte, and you've got an eruption in your lap...as might the viewers of the woman's site.

Obviously the picture was posed, but I'd like to think that all of my work-from-home colleagues are young, thin and drink latte...then again, if they are, it's a pity they are not in the office - where the dominant force are tea-drinking old farts.

There's a famous picture, painted by mono-lugged impressionist Van-Gough, of a Parisian cafe under the stars. Folk sit and enjoy their coffee, oblivious to the fact that if they were but to walk over to the painter and offer him 50 francs for his painting, their ancestors would have bloody worshipped them. But where are today's version of that iconic image? Would anyone be tempted to commit a scene in Starbucks to canvas?

Maybe...Edward Hopper was famous for his ability to convey isolation and alienation in an urban environment...alone in a crowd. One of his most famous paintings is, of course, 'Night Hawks'. Customers sit in a diner late at night. Anyone who has seen the painting kind of wishes they were in the booth in the corner reading Camus, but is also kind of glad that they are too well adjusted to end up like that. Hopper would have painted a good Starbucks scene I think, and not just because he liked using green and white - incidentally the colour of money.