Spotted online recently, this:
…which really made my geographical OCD senses tingle.
What? A mildly blurred image of a disposable takeaway coffee cup?
Well, yes. But one which has come from the Greenwich Coffee Company in Greenwich Turkey, and one upon which the 0o Prime Meridian very definitely doesn’t go through Greenwich.
Or Turkey.
In fact, their 0o Prime Meridian is actually very much 18o.
Oops.
And, if you choose to ignore Stockholm (but then again, why would you?), then the only other major city on this line is right here: Cape Town. Quite why a business choosing to name itself after the accepted home of the Prime Meridian (since 1884, at least) has chosen to put the Prime Meridian going nowhere near… well… the Prime Meridian, is a little baffling.
And it gets even more confusing when you look at the decor in one of their outlets:
What now?!? Another Prime Meridian, this time again ostensibly at 0o, but actually sitting somewhere about 6o east of the actual Greenwich Meridian*, despite the big orange lettering suggesting otherwise.
But maybe there are other clues on that wall. Ireland being joined to Wales and Scotland. New Zealand only having one island. Hudson Bay being Hudson Lake. The easterly migration of Rwanda and Tanzania. And the misspelling of Guatemala.
Perhaps it’s just that they’re not actually very bothered about geographical accuracy. And I guess that’s fine, as long as they are putting a bit more effort into their products and their service. And they do get 5 stars on their one review on Tripadvisor, and that despite the coffee being rubbish:
So the only coffee they bought was crap, but they gave it 5 stars and titled their review: “Coffee [yummy, licking lips emoji]”. This place really is confusing.
For me though, it’s just a bit disappointing that I’m not going to be able to stick a straight bit of metal on my patio and then charge tourists a hefty fee to take photos of themselves standing astride it.
Perhaps I should be considering a campaign – potentially fronted by the Greenwich Coffee guys – to move the Greenwich Meridian to Cape Town. For a while, at least.
Just while they use up the last stock of that bulk order of geographically incorrect takeaway cups, and I get to make some decent money from the temporary rehoming of the big North-South line, thus paying for the therapy I will need from having had to see it come through here anyway.
* and thus missing every single city in the world apart from Saarbrücken.