I’m a hypocrite. I talk out of both sides of my mouth. I say one thing and do another. I am two-faced. You won’t catch me sneaking into a KFC or a McDonalds (although this might depend on how much I’m craving pancakes). I must confess, though, that I spend hours at the local Starbucks.

I love so many things about Oxford, like the spires of the city and its hidden lanes that lead to unexplored treasures or just a dead-end. Church bellringers practice at set times during the week, their ringing heard at odd hours of the day. The locals I’ve met are accommodating and welcoming. There is an almost overwhelming assortment of activities to choose from each day. Oxford is a writer’s delight. Everywhere I go is too interesting. Images bombard my brain with stories and thoughts and daydreams. They scream write about me! No wait. Write that! Write everything! Notes are taken, but then something new queries for attention as a new thread begins within my brain’s comment section. I’ve never understood writer’s block. There are always words waiting to fill the blank screen. And here’s the problem. There is no place to write.

There is a particular bench at a particular turn of the Cherwell that I like to use for writing. On a lovely morning without rain or wind and when the sun finds me, I fill my notebook with prose. This perfect storm of conditions has happened almost never.

It’s a bit morbid, but I find a cemetery is a quiet place for reflection and a conduit for powerful imagery. But when my eyes focus on a tombstone, it’s over. There are so many stories told in so few words on a tombstone. Those words, scattered across hundreds of graves, have a way of putting my little life into perspective. It’s the whole “I’m just a cog in the big wheel of the universe. Actually I’m not as important as a cog. I’m that little bolt that drops onto the road and watches the wheel move on without any notice of my absence.” These thoughts, while introspective and spiritual, are pretty much a downer. So I turn to the graves and think about the Zombie thing. If the world ends soon, will I be turned into a Zombie? If it happened right this moment, how might I escape? Okay that’s pretty silly. I walk through the cemetery, making sure I don’t step on anyone, because now I’m filled with images of Stephen King’s Carrie . I look at the inscriptions. A couple is buried together and at the bottom of their stone is a memorial to their two sons who died in WWI. The first at Ypres and the second in the battle of the Somme. The silliness stops. I think, “How many tombstones are there in this country with memorials to sons buried in trenches or entombed under one hundred years of mud in how many fields? How many Oxford men lost their lives in WWI? I should look for tombstones. Maybe I can find a register in a Google search. You can see where this is going. So, I end up at Starbucks.

In the States, when important distractions like the laundry or Season 6 of Psych interrupt my writing, I head to Starbucks. For morning writing sessions, I can count on Starbucks opening hours before some of the local places. Even in Utah, there is always one coffee shop open until 10:00 pm. In Oxford, the late night coffee house doesn’t seem to exist. The latest I’ve seen is a Starbucks that closes at 8:30 PM . That is way too early if I need to reach The Zone on a rainy evening.

The Zone is a wonderful place. I am out of contact with the world when I “zone out”. My children can stand right before me and I don’t see them. My friends wonder why I look up and ignore their hellos. When I reach The Zone, I don’t see or hear anything that isn’t in my head. Eventually a voice pierces the bubble protecting my private world. “Mom, Mom, hey Mom.” A finger touches me on the shoulder and then the owner steps back quickly, because he has experienced a violent reaction to my sudden re-entry into the “real” world. I am now making a blanket apology for anyone I have dissed. I was traveling in The Zone.

I have reached The Zone in Costa Coffee or Caffe Nero, but Starbucks is the best venue for daydreaming. First, it is familiar. Once I get past ordering a bacon butty and counting out quid and pence, the basic layout is much the same in any of the stores. There is nothing new to distract me. Second, the accents in Starbucks are mostly American. I don’t have to figure out the hidden meaning of a phrase. The third reason is the most important. I don’t feel badly about taking up a table for hours in a Starbucks. There are plenty of cafes and pubs here where I can get a decent espresso and sit down with my notebook. It is a University town where people with books and computers are pretty standard, but it is also a tourist economy and tables are a valued commodity. I don’t feel comfortable taking over a table in a pub when someone else wants fish and chips. Besides that, how can I concentrate when I am writing at a table once occupied by JR Tolkien and the Inklings?

I’m not proud that I am setting aside my principles for selfish reasons or that most of this blog originated in a Starbucks. I justify this by remembering that I wasn’t actually in Starbucks. I was somewhere in The Zone.