He shot his cuffs and then all hell broke loose

To shoot your cuffs is the simple and effective act of, having donned your suit jacket, rapidly extending your arms so that the cuffs of your shirt appear at just the right place.

This week, at the Little Chalfont Costa I observed this and actually had to spit the coffee from my mouth such was my laughter.

There were only about 8 or so customers with me and the cuff shooter amongst them.

Me in my usual scruffy attire, him in a very dapper suit.

Having acquired his coffee he chose a table and very carefully took his suit jacket off, folded it and placed it on the back on the chair.

He drank his coffee and ate his pastry, I drank and ate mine.

As he finished and rose to leave, his paper napkin fell, unseen by him, to the floor.

He put his jacket on, and at the very moment he effected a very smart and vigorous cuff shooting, the Costa assistant, who had spotted the fallen napkin and had bent down to pick it up.

He'd not seen her.

His smartly executed cuff shooting resulted in him essentially punching her in the back of the head and she ducked to collect the napkin.

She staggered forward and in rising clipped the tray with his mostly drunk coffee cup on.

The coffee cup fell into his open briefcase.

He had the good grace to look aghast at his faux pas and even managed to extract the coffee cup from his bag whilst either not noticing or pretending not to notice he'd got the balance of his coffee as a takeaway.

She, being Eastern European, took it all in her stride, though she did look a little winded.

This 54 year old ended up spitting my coffee all over my jeans, which when combined with the cod liver oil stain I'd picked up from an earlier incident, made me look even more scruffy.

Isn't life wonderful?