Small Batches

Working mornings don’t usually sound like freshly baked raspberry slice and coffee.

They sound like city-bound trains spilling colourful crowds into narrow Melbourne alleyways - a funnel into cubicles, paper jams, and meetings in buildings that never quite made sense to either of us.

Years ago, we ran through those same buildings with Starbucks in hand, speaking in accents that made no sense to anyone but us. Or so we were told by people who weren't really listening.

Someone called us the Dynamic Duo.

But we knew better - two outsiders, on the hunt for good coffee, the nearest exit, and a good laugh.

Workdays were never really about food, though restraint was never my forte. At +39, I blamed the Italian accent for the bruschetta. At Sahara, autumn light leaned through the window and for a moment, the air smelled of spice, wine, and a city pretending to be somewhere else. For an hour or two, it almost worked.

These are the moments that stay.

Not the meetings. Not the paper jams. Not the people certain they mattered.

The small batches. 

Us, building something new and a little messy. By the time anyone noticed, the map had already changed. It grew beyond us. It changed us, though I don’t think we realised it at the time.

A shared joke. A strange building. A coffee cup gone cold long ago. 

And then, somehow, we weren’t there anymore. 

Messages, years later, still arriving on the same wavelength.

Melbourne keeps changing, but some things hold.

The legend, apparently, is still in session.