Coffee, Community and the Overview Effect

An American girl enters a bar in Milan and asks for a takeaway latte. The barman tuts and instead invites her to sit at a table where he will serve her. The girl tuts in turn and leaves like she doesn’t have time for this, just give her a Styrofoam cup with a slit to sip from and a plastic stirrer already.

Italians take their coffee seriously. As seriously as the British and Japanese have traditionally taken their tea. And there is a ritual attached. It might not involve always sitting down - many take their coffee al banco- but they never take it out to drink on the street. The café is the proper place to drink coffee, and there is a collective relish and pleasure in that.

Alongside this comes an artisanal care on the part of the barman to serve an epically good cup of coffee - including the flourish of twisting the handle round to make it easier to pick up. The wobbly heart carved in froth by bepimpled baristas in the UK and the oversized bucket of piping-hot slop that passes for a latte are a kilometre away from the exquisite miniatures served with a satisfying click-clack of a dinky cup and scalloped saucer in Milan. 

And don’t get me started on the seductive little rustle of a sugar packet, shaken like a tiny bell. Even though I don’t take sugar, the sound remains enchanting. All of which is to give you a flavour of the community spirit that exists in Italian culture, a sense of belonging lubricated by coffee and brioche.

I have worked in a number of schools. Each of them has claimed to be a ‘community’. To an extent this is always true; but it seems especially true of The British School of Milan. And rarely has this been more precious than at this time when we endure an enforced separation due to the coronavirus, and now the closure of cafés.

When people move to a new country, they not only change jobs, they change their whole lifestyle, and find themselves having to readjust to a new culture and language. This is true for many parents, students and staff who join us each year. So it is important that people feel they belong. When families relocate, the school becomes a second home for them.

‘Community’ is the reference point we turn to when we want to rise above ourselves. It’s interesting that to be expelled from a community - to be ex-communicated, whether from the church or the EU - can sound so isolating and grave. In these days of fledgeling Brexit, and now the recent virus outbreak, we must stand all the closer, strengthening our collective resilience, celebrating our achievements, taking pride each day in what we do.

It was not when he landed on the moon that the astronaut Alan Shepard began to cry, but when he looked back at the Earth, that blue marble, his home planet. The experience has been reported by so many astronauts that it has earned its own name: the ‘overview effect’. 

Families feel a bit like that about their school, I think, when they look back. And when that school represents an effective second home to them, the sensation of warmth mingles with a feeling of belonging to swell the heart all the more - perhaps especially when the feeling is quickened by the slightly bitter yet frothy memory of a fine cup of coffee. 

Chris Greenhalgh
Principal & CEO