It is a truth universally learned in the coffee queue that sometimes you discover what other people think about you in ways of small surprise.

There is a lovely café close to one of my jobs, the Friday and Saturday one, and each week coffee is bought. This is a popular place and the two queues are long: one for those waiting to eat upstairs, another for the takeaway counter.

Twice each week I stand in the notionally quicker queue, clutching my reusable bamboo cup. The cup is bright, brighter than my mood probably, and acts as a sort of beacon. Many of the friendly staff work in the higher seating area. From that cake-and-sandwich-serving eerie, they will spot me in the queue, pop down and take the brightly coloured cup (saving the world one coffee at a time, and all that).

No one else seems to mind this favouritism or scowl at the queue-jumping.

This scene plays out again as I stand in takeaway queue. And that’s when the name pops.

“Cappuccino Man’s here,” one of the women says. The world-saving cup is handed over, along with two quid, and makes its way upstairs. “That’s Cappuccino Man’s coffee,” someone says.

“Cappuccino Man’s paid for his coffee,” another friendly woman says, in acknowledgement of the till-swerving.

After a milk-frothing, espresso-spurting gap, one of the friendly women hands the cup down. “Cappuccino Man’s got his coffee,” someone else says.

The till man is passing at the time. He is quite small, smaller than me at any rate, wears round glasses, has a beard and a voice with actorly tones. There is a twinkle behind those circles.

“I’m sure you all have very professional jobs,” he says, pausing on his way back to the till. “But we have names for you.”

Then he is off to stand behind the glass counter with its over-sized cakes, pork pies, Scotch eggs and sausage rolls.

Do I have such a job? Sometimes it’s hard to remember. If two weekly shifts at PA, two part-time lecturing gigs, a spot of freelance feature writing and some obsessive blogging counts, then perhaps I do; who can say?

Anyway, we never know how others see us. But I do at least now know that to one group of people I am Cappuccino Man. I’ll take that, it’s cool enough, certainly cooler than that coffee. But if only I’d been drinking espresso all this time, I’d be Espresso Man, which would be cooler still, but at least I’m not Flat White Man or Skinny Oat Milk Latte Man. Or, heaven help us, Peppermint Tea Man.

The unknowable lens of how others see us has long concerned poets and ageing men in coffee queues.

Famously, Robert Burns addressed this in his poem To A Louse –

“O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.”

Oh, think I need to hit Sassenach Translate – “O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.”

I bet Robbie Burns was never called Cappuccino Man.