NAIL IN THE COFFEE

This morning I ordered an Americano instead of a Latte. With hot milk for prolonged rapture. And it made me wonder where this is going. I’m guessing the next step is drop the milk. Then add an extra shot (whatever that is). Then two extra shots, then three, four - I don’t know, what’s the maximum? When do they pat you on the shoulder and say ‘I think you’ve had enough son’ and alert the security staff to see you off the premises?

For years I held out against coffee. It was tea all the way, the comforting and benign ritual of bubbly water on herby pillows. The aural equivalent of a hot bath - every half hour. Because that’s the thing about tea. It’s such a non event that you just keep doing it. Not so much a drink as a periodic change of texture. In those days the coffee drinkers were a dark and mysterious under-class. Masters of the infernal filtering apparatus that summoned forth the pungent black liquid of their desire. I treated them with suspicion, nay disdain.

But then, on a particularly pointless Wednesday morning, I was beguiled by the Costa Coffee machine at the garage, and I did drink. And that was it. Soon the caffeine was more important than the diesel, and a trip to BP became as integral to the morning ritual as Marmite and John Humphries. But less divisive. But soon the machine wasn’t enough. I needed to see the beans. I needed the steam and the squirty sound effects. I needed that annoying banging they do to get the spent grounds out of that twisty thing the crude coffee dribbles out of. I needed to learn what that twisty thing the crude coffee dribbles out of was called. 

So M&S cafe became my regular stop. Large frothy latte, one sugar. No biscuit (calories!). But M&S soon began to feel just too… tea. I mean, can you really get a decent cup of coffee from someone wearing a hair net? I needed to be hard sold croissants and chocolate twists. Not politely made aware of fruit scones and battenburg cake. I needed the back of sweaty t-shirts. I needed coffee culture.

Cue Costa: the fish and chip shop of the coffee world. Greggs without the sausage roles. An establishment that satisfies a contemporary demand while adhering faithfully to Britain’s traditional service ethos of odious indifference. Which makes it ideal for coffee shop beginners like me. Because as the staff are only capable of lavishing their disinterest on one customer at once you’ll have plenty of time to study the menu. 

In fact, within a week you’ll probably know it by heart, learning exciting new words like 'barista', ‘mocha’, ‘macchiato’ and ‘Cortado'. In the Costa queue you’ll learn that espresso isn’t spelt with an ‘x’ and have time to ponder some of coffee’s great mysteries; like what’s a Flat White? And why is it so small? Yet not flat? You’ll develop a detailed knowledge of the coffee making process and, if you want, think up your own names for the apparatus. Including that twisty thing the crude coffee dribbles out of. I decided to call it a filtroid lever-pop. 

Esteamed Costa Queue Academy of Coffee

But again, I needed more. And soon I was drawn to the brotherhood of the bean. To the inner sanctum of coffee culture. I committed myself to Starbucks. Coffee with heart. The place where everyone is on first name terms. A safe haven of sustainability in an exploitative world. A company that cares so much about the welfare of its supply chain that it makes its muffins out of recycled Costa Rican coffee farmers (even though the 6 million cups it dishes out every day are non-recyclable). This became home, until it became apparent that nobody there could spell my name.

But that didn’t matter, because I was already drawn to another. A coffee shop that’s so authentic nobody even speaks English. They pretend to be Italian, but they’re not really. They’re Caffeinationals - a specially perculated people who live in smooth jazz, bred specially to do one thing and one thing only - make you buy a pastry when you've already had your breakfast. A Caffeinational can be temporarily short circuited by declining said pastry. In which case they'll refuse to stamp your loyalty card, and may collapse under the counter for a short time. But there’s always more round the back with the same accent to step in and take over.

Caffeinationals ordered to wave.

And that’s where I am with my first Americano - Caffè Nero. Loyalty card number 26: stamped. I head for the door (a mere step thanks to Nero’s insistence on authentically cramped premises) and notice the coffee slosh slightly out of the suckling hole. Hmm, that must be what Americanos do. Being thinner than Lattes - more invasive. I take a cautious sip. It’s sharply hot, bitter, strangely repugnant. Like your first pint. And equally inevitable. Like the beginning of something. But what harm can it possibly do? People don’t dye of coffee do they? Or is it one of those things we haven’t been doing long enough to really know. Like vaping. And Facebook. 

Later I decide to get to the bottom of it and ask Google. And the good news is it’s good for you: preventing headaches, warding off dementia, and reducing your chance of getting cancer and type 2 diabetes. The bad news is it's also bad for you: causing headaches, heartburn, jitters, confusion, hallucination, raised blood pressure, increased urination and accelerated heartbeat. So there you have it. It’s down to me to make up my very own mind using my very own blend of ignorance, blind prejudice and wishful thinking. As is often the case with life’s more important issues. Like whether the MMR jab will kill your children. Or Europe.

Caffè Nero coffee makes you laugh.

On reflection I decide to let coffee be a good thing. On the grounds that there are already enough things queuing up to to end my life prematurely. Like cigarettes (the analogue kind), alcohol and sitting still for long periods while eating crisps. And, of course, statins - something else where the experts cancel each other out by disagreeing. I’m sure they’ll discover sooner or later that statins only stop you having a heart attack so they can kill you in a newer, more interesting way. And I suppose one day they’ll discover coffee’s lethal too and start serving it in plain cups with shocking images of an enlarged bladder.

But in the meantime let’s raise our (un-recyclable) coffee cups to life, the place where they put everything that kills us. And to death - the only sure-fire way of kicking all those potentially unhealthy habits…

Oh, and it’s called a Portafilter. Thanks Google.

For more on death, check out:

Dead Again


@jesoverthinksit