What happened in Hastings?

Nick Hornby passes along an intriguing anecdote:

I am on a train from the south coast back to London. Across the aisle, three elderly passengers, two women and a man, buy coffee from the trolley.

“What you do,” says the elderly man to his friends, “Is, you sip through the hole in the top of the lid.”

The two elderly women give it a go, tentatively at first, and pronounce themselves amazed and delighted at this technological breakthrough.

“I only found that out myself when I went to Hastings,” said the man.

What happened in Hastings? I wish I knew.

"What Happened in Hastings" - sounds like short story gold to me! Writers, hop to it!