The mask PROBLEM

How do you stay safe while gossiping over coffee?

- JOY GOSNEY

This will make you laugh. No, wait a minute: let’s not assume. It certainly made me laugh, but you are the paying customer. You are perfectly at liberty to remain stonyfaced, and perhaps even write a stiff letter to your MP.

Anyway, we were sitting outside at The Nice Little Caff in the Park when I noticed two women carrying cups of coffee to the next table. I noticed them in particular because both were wearing rather elegant face masks.

One had a fetching little number in a very loud purple, with white polka dots. The other was a heavily patterned number in yellow and sky blue and goodness knows what else. If the Lone Ranger had been an interior decorator, this is the sort of mask he might have worn.

Anyway, they seemed to be chatting away happily through these masks, and then Mrs Loud Purple raised her cup to her lips… and suddenly remembered how difficult it is to drink coffee through a face mask.

She put the cup down, raised it again in forlorn hope, and then admitted defeat. She put the cup down once more, and then tried raising it with one hand while, with the other hand, gently pulling down the mask so that her mouth would be exposed only for that brief moment when it was accepting a delivery of skinny latte.