Coffee shop chat about the Queen’s birthday parade led to talk that might not amuse Her Majesty, on the off chance she was passing through Hamilton and overheard.

“I’ve got no interest in that stuff. That’s nothing to me,” declared one member of staff when asked if she’d gone to watch all the pomp, circumstance and majorettes on Front Street.

“You know what I want to read about? I want to hear who fainted!”

To satisfy anyone else with a similarly ghoulish sense of curiosity, Hector can report that one person — identity unknown — did indeed flake out in the soaring heat.

However, further swooning was averted by quick-thinking prosecution lawyer Wayne Caines, who revived a wilting audience member ... by inviting her to suck on a boiled sweet.

It’s actually been an amusing week for Hector on the coffee-shop gossip front. In another establishment, Hector was entertained to hear a patient member of staff at Rock Island Coffee on Reid Street advising a caffeine confused American tourist.

“No, we don’t actually grow the coffee here in Bermuda,” explained the worker as the tourist clutched a bag of what he must have assumed were ‘home-grown’ Java beans.

Maybe the perplexed visitor had asked for a plane ticket to coffee hotspots Brazil or Burundi and, before they could say milk and two sugars, wound up in Bermuda by mistake?

Continuing on the earwigging and confused tourist theme — maybe the shock of the cruiser running aground last week is still taking its toll — Hector was amused to hear about the holidaymaker who confused a mega-ship with a very unglamorous cable-laying boat.

“Is that a cruise ship?,” an eager American asked as the fast ferry glided into Dockyard past the forever stationary Cable Innovator.

Hardly a world authority on shipping, even Hector can tell the difference between a colourful cruise liner boasting row after row after row of passenger cabin windows — and the dull facade of the world’s first purpose-built cable laying vessel.

The holidaymaker later asked whether the Clock Tower Shopping Mall was a church ... but that’s another story.

One tourist who recently left the Island was left ruing the lack of Bermudian politeness when she reacquainted herself with the unremitting joys of the UK public transport system.

On returning to England after a two-week break here, she found that allowing people to get off the bus before she jumped on and waiting for it to stop before climbing off was not quite the ticket.

“I got on a bus on Sunday in Leeds,” she told a friend in an e-mail. “I waited to see if anyone got off before I moved to get on, said ‘good afternoon’ to a grunt and sat down.

“When we were nearly there I rang the bell to get off, then I waited until it stopped before I got up, collided with everyone else getting on and was hardly off before he set off to the next stop.”

Not everything is rosy on the roads in Bermuda, however, as a website claiming to cover the “politics of driving” proves.

It featured a court story from this very newspaper about a woman arrested for making a rude gesture to a traffic cop as he wrote her a parking ticket.

“Extending your middle finger in the direction of a Police officer who just wrote you a ticket can get you arrested in Bermuda,” proclaims theNewspaper.com site, alongside a picture of a officer directing traffic from the Front Street ‘birdcage’.

He appears to be giving the camera a cheery wave, so presumably he’s not the cop who felt the wrath of the defendant’s middle digit.

Other related news on the website we are sure keeps motoring fans revved up: ‘New York Police Target Funeral Procession’; ‘Meter Maid Tickets Balloon Delivery Man’ and ‘No parking lines painted around car; car ticketed.’

We’ll keep you informed of any updates...