We stopped for coffee while walking the Pembrokeshire coast path at Milford Haven.
Around us were tankers, tugs, pilot boats, jetties and terminals. An entire harbour full of things designed on the fairly sensible principle that engineering has to work.
Then I was handed a coffee cup that required instructions.
Push.
Pull.
Blast.
Blast?
The thing looked like a cross between a takeaway cup and an escape room puzzle, with four flaps around the top and no obvious place from which to drink.
Then came the sugar sachets. Outside. Beside Milford Haven Marina. You tear one open and the empty wrapper immediately attempts to make for Ireland. And, of course, there is nowhere to put it. No tray, no little waste pot, nothing. So you're trying to control hot coffee, sugar, a spoon and several tiny airborne pieces of litter while simultaneously working out how the cup operates.
Fortunately, because we were walking, we had our own cups with us. So we poured the coffee into them. Which rather raises the obvious question. If a specially designed coffee cup has to be decanted into another cup before it becomes practical to drink from, what exactly has been achieved?
The coffee was excellent and the service was friendly. This isn't really about the café. It's about the modern urge to redesign perfectly functional objects. For centuries, the brief for a cup was simple. Hold liquid, protect fingers, allow drinking.
Job done.
Now it apparently has to be innovative, sustainable, distinctive and accompanied by operating instructions. Milford Haven is surrounded by engineering worth hundreds of millions of pounds, all ultimately judged by one question.
Does it work?
Our coffee container didn't.
The solution turned out to be a cup.
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