Costa Coffee
New Oxford Street, London
Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant’s face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale’s brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can.
Moby-Dick, Chapter 79: The Prairie
A decaf frappuccino from Costa is enough to sink my aged heart. But to show I am no curmudgeon, I accede to youthful demands. The barista’s granite face is illegible as he gestures mutely to the machine behind me. I jab and poke in irritation until the screen flickers. Extra’s, it announces, in greengrocerly insolence. How do I like them apple’s?
I further prove my uncurmudgeonliness by stumping along the pavement to the museum raging about The Collapse of Civilisation. What a piece of work is a man! Or was, when we could blasted spell. What feats we achieved! What was it all for? Were those soaring works of the poets, linguists, and grammarians but a passing fable?
Inside, through the Great Court, and to our first stop: the Rosetta Stone. Crowds jostle in low light, straining to see the spotlit spidery lines of Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek. Over bobbed heads, I see children’s faces reflected in the glass, eyes alive, fingers pointing, ideas whispering. Parents explaining. Perhaps I should chill out.
