Vespa PX: Italian Blend

Having rushed back from the little boys' room, I headed straight into the supermarket and inspected every single aisle until I found my wife and kids. Well, sort of. The three human beings in front of me looked to me like some sort of amazing circus act. There was my 4 year-old son jumping up and down - in what seemed like a cross between a kid throwing a tantrum while at the same time, attempting to juggle a couple of Kinder Surprise eggs to grab his mom's attention.


My other son, standing (or was it sitting?) on his pushchair, was doing a Harry Houdini impression with half of his body still strapped down while the other was clambering trying to grab either his mother or something on the top of the pushchair. My wife who had only minutes earlier, refused my offer of a trolley or a shopping basket was playing a deadly balancing act of keeping all the groceries (and our son) on a pushchair that had a tendency of tipping over at the first sign of incorrectly placed weight.

Well...? Are you just going to stand there?

Huh? Oh...

The show was abruptly ended when my wife noticed that I was just standing in front of her and the boys without making myself useful. Like some sort of telepathic connection between my wife and I (or was it her burning stare?), I understood and immediately grabbed the grocery bag just in time to save it from tipping over the pushchair.

We're out of coffee. How 'bout we try something different?

I nodded in agreement. I've had enough of the awful instant coffee that we've been drinking for a while now and so, didn't mind a change. I scanned the shelves for anything interesting but they all looked the same to me. Decaf. Fairtrade. Organic. Java. Arabica. It was like a map of the world only in shades of fluorescent green, turqoise, chocolate and silver. Hmmm...decisions, decisions.

OK, I've got two here. You choose and don't go with that one just because it has a Vespa on it.

What the...Vespa? I looked at the two bags of coffee my wife was holding up. Both were packaged in red but one had a Vespa PX proudly printed on it. I pretended to read the descriptions on both packages but inside, I was like an 8 year-old girl asked to choose between a pack of Justin Bieber-themed cereal and boring muesli that tastes more like bird feed.

Let's try this one...it sounds like it tastes...errr...different!

I pointed to the Caffè Italiano obviously, not influenced whatsoever by the Vespa on the package. My wife smiled and put the other pack of coffee back on the shelf but via her "telepathic" skills I knew that my shallow gamble would cost me if the thing ended-up tasting like dried carbon, grease and two-stroke oil.