DAVID ADAMS writes about the odder side of life…
• Fancy a “selfieccino”? A London cafe has taken coffee-top art to a new level by putting an image of the customer on the top of their coffee. The Tea Terrace, which runs establishments including one at the Oxford Street branch of the department store House of Fraser, has become the first in Europe to offer a coffee topped with a picture of – yourself. Coffee-drinkers simply send a headshot to the barista via a messaging app and a machine then scans the image which is “printed” on top of the coffee in 30 seconds using a flavourless food colouring. “The likeness and accuracy of the image is amazing,” said Ehab Shouly, managing director of The Tea Terrace (pictured). “And it still looks like what is known among coffee lovers as ‘barista art’, which is when a barista spends time creating a likeness of a customer on the froth manually.” Certainly puts an end to someone jumping the queue and taking a coffee that’s not theirs.
• ‘Alternative facts’ has been voted the worst word or phrase of 2017 by the Australian-based Plain English Foundation. Dr Neil James, executive director of foundation, said that with US President Donald Trump dominating international politics, “2017 saw some of the world’s worst ever political spin”. “In a post-truth era, our politicians can apparently give ‘alternative facts’ and be ‘instinctively correct’, regardless of reality,” Dr James said. “Yet a fact cannot have an alternative that is also a fact.” The Trump Administration was also awarded the foundation’s tautology of the year, found in a tweet by Mr Trump in which he said: “fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media”. Others among the worst words, ‘frankenwords’, and phrases included ‘involuntary deboarding’ (a phrase used when dragging someone off a plane), ‘Kwaussie’ (a hybrid of Kiwi and Aussie) and ‘WAxit’ (Western Australia’s version of Brexit).
• Every one of the more than 1,600 residents of the town of Scotland in the US state of Connecticut are reportedly being granted the honorary titles of ‘Lord and Ladies of Glencoe’ in the country of Scotland. UK-based company Highland Titles, which sells “souvenir” plots of land in a nature reserve it owns at Glencoe, announced this week that it was giving each of the 1,694 residents of the UK town one square foot (0.09 square metres) in the reserve with the new land-owners, who have to call the Connecticut community’s town hall to become land-owners, to also gain the courtesy titles. The US town, which has an annual Highland Festival, was settled in 1700 by a Scotsman named Isaac Magoon.
