ONE day last week, I was reading my horoscope and it said: 'You will meet a tall, dark stranger over a cup of coffee. He will hold your hand, ask you intimate questions and talk about relationships.' Actually, I made that up but that's what it should have said because that was what happened when I met Dimitrios. You will have heard of people who read tea leaves; Dimitrios goes one caffeinated step better and reads Greek coffee cups.
He's been doing it since he was a boy in Australia but only entered the weird dimension of the professional soothsayer in 1993. Since then he's become Australia's most startingly forthright and accurate psychic. At least, that was what it claimed on his press release, which also described how he had been invited to attend an international event in Hong Kong in 1995. I took this to be a reference to the cubby hole at the back of the New Age Shop in Old Bailey Street where he sat last weekend brewing coffee and gloomily contemplating the rain.
Deciding that I could do with a bit of direction or, failing that, a strong cup of coffee, I made an appointment which I began to regret almost immediately (beware of Greeks bearing psychic gifts). Dimitrios claims he will only reveal the positive things he sees but there is always the worry with these people that they will blench, back away and start to babble incoherently as you blithely stroll in. He was with a client when I arrived so to calm myself I squelched round the New Age Shop, noting that they sell a tape of breathing exercises called Tibetan Caffeine, which seemed a spooky kind of coincidence.
A man with a marked resemblance to the actor Rick Moranis, only heftier and jollier, emerged. 'Have you sorted out the dollars and cents?' inquired Dimitrios, for it was he, in an Australian accent. This was the first of several references to money (his, unfortunately, not mine). A consultation costs $750 and he explained at one point that he was trying to raise A$3 million ($16.8 million) to open a cancer and AIDS clinic in Brisbane, in conjunction with a cosmetics firm, which seemed a bit rum. 'You have no idea what the doctor who runs this firm intends to do,' he observed mysteriously. How long will it take to raise the $3 million? A far-away look came into Dimitrios' eyes but I put this down to accountancy rather than a tuning into the future. 'I'd reckon about five years,' he said.
A glamorous blonde called Regina Di Giusto introduced herself as Dimitrios' promoter. Regina is Italian and believes in speaking her mind. 'You are wondering if I am the promoter or the lover,' she announced, which was uncanny because I was. 'I am both!' She was also today's coffee-maker, brewing it up on one of those portable propane gas cookers which blossom in British lay-bys during the summer months. The label on the jar said Turkish Style Pulverised Coffee. Regina said it didn't matter which type it was, so long as it was powdery.
While the coffee was cooling, Dimitrios offered to read the palm of the hand I write with. 'When I read palms it's like looking at a television station with a video recorder,' he said. 'I can rewind it for the past or fast-forward it to see the future. And when you smoke, it's like looking at a channel that's all snowy. It clouds the vision, you see, like this - here and here.' I said that I didn't smoke. 'Ah, but you are surrounded by people who do,' was the swift response. (Not really true, unless you count the general muckiness of the air in Hong Kong.) Then he said that I had a strong love for my parents and that I had a scar on my stomach (spot on) and that I would live to be at least 86, so long as stress didn't get to me first which sounded rather like bet-hedging.
'Now, relationships,' began Dimitrios, peering closely at my palm. Just as I was hoping he was viewing a particularly exciting episode of The Bold And The Beautiful he made that noise (Uh-aww) the buzzer makes when you get a question wrong on television quiz shows. 'Oh dear.' Dimitrios was shaking his head. 'I always tell my clients to write down a long list of values that they want out of a relationship. I was a lost soul, never getting my life together until I did a course where I wrote down this list. Now I have focus, I have direction.' I agreed I'd think about it.