THE GLOSS is celebrating café conversations, with sisters, mums, chums and others! Whether planned gossip or impromptu catch-up, involving a secret shared, a problem divulged, or great news to impart, we meet up to connect and chat over coffee in our favourite cafés. And sometimes we go solo and listen to other people’s conversations. Eavesdropping? No! We prefer to say, we couldn’t help but overhear ….

What makes café conversations fascinating and fun? We’d love to hear from you. Write a short paragraph (not more than 200 words) telling us about a conversation you had or overheard, and send it to us at digital@thegloss.ie. Your piece could be selected for publication and you could win a gorgeous Butlers gift card to fund more café conversations in lovely Butlers locations all over Ireland …

By Eimear Nolan

“The second thing I wanted to ask you about was divorce lawyers.” This, overheard from the next table, would surely have caught my attention had their conversation not already done so. Somewhat incongruously now that I knew the second, the first thing the woman had wanted to ask her friend about had been a French company that made cashmere balaclavas for babies. She was desperate to secure some as gifts for new parents. I’d strained to catch the name, and scribbled it on my napkin when I did. Only a certain number was produced in each batch, so you had to join a waiting list. The unexpected conversational pivot to divorce left me feeling somewhat thrown, and I stole a glance at the friend’s face to see if she was similarly affected. It was hard to tell.

“I don’t have direct experience, obviously,” she said, and the first woman murmured “no, no” in acknowledgement. “But there are a few people I could ask.”

“Thank you. I thought perhaps…”

“Yes,” her friend agreed quickly. “Maybe.”

There was a pause, during which the friend dipped a wooden stirrer into her coffee and withdrew it slowly, like a nurse administering an injection.

“I could ask on the mums WhatsApp group, if you like. Anonymously, of course.”

“Let me think about it.”

The friend reached a hand across the table and let her fingers graze her friend’s arm.

“I do know an amazing couples’ therapist,” she said. “Is there any chance you could still…bridge?”

The woman considered before saying, “I think the bridge may be there. It’s just not clear to me that either of us wants to cross.”

I left the cafe soon afterwards, but echoes of the conversation reverberated in my head for the rest of the day. That evening, I considered asking my husband what he thought about bridges and islands and how to live with the fear that one day, the bridge will be there, but one or both of you won’t want to cross. In the end, I decided to ask what he thought about cashmere baby balaclavas instead. He was sceptical at first, particularly about the waiting list system, but when I showed him the site, he enthused that our baby would look so cute in one and suggested that we get on the list immediately. Which was what I’d been thinking, too.

Niamh Connell, reader

Monday afternoon. A sense of exhaustion seems to cling to me, dragging out of my clothes, grabbing at my ankles. Only one thing for it – to treat myself to a cafe visit.

An after-school blow-in orders something involved, then joins her colleagues at a table to discuss Ms Hanley’s trigonometry assignment: “How can she expect us to know all of this for tomorrow?”

Staff turn to their apothecary shelves of dark syrups and brown powders and start pulling up levers and pushing down buttons on the silver monster machines.

The powerful smell of strong coffee floods the room.

A young woman coughs, and all faces rotate towards the culprit. Chairs shimmy as if repelled by an invisible force, as though the furniture itself were aware of the social connotations of being ill in public.

Meanwhile, a woman of a certain vintage asks the good-natured barista once again: ‘but where are you REALLY from?’, dissatisfied with his initial answers.

The schoolgirls make eye contact and attempt to smother their laughter at her confusion, giving into that special hysteria that only comes with exam stress.

I finish my coffee and cake. At least I don’t have to reckon with the wrath of Ms Hanley in the morning. Small blessings.

The home of Butlers Chocolates is once again open for factory tours. Learn how the chocolate masters at Butlers create chocolate perfection and enjoy a sweet treat in the Café after decorating your own chocolate masterpiece. Book online through www.butlerschocolates.com.

Discover the Art of Café Conversation at Butlers Chocolate Cafés …