a good cup of coffee?

That's all I ask for, a good cup of proper coffee!

I like coffee, it is a superb beverage. A proper cup of coffee (not necessarily in a proper coffee cup), with it's delightful aromas and taste it is like nothing else on earth. Whether you filter it or percolate it or cafitiere it, you just gotta love those beans! At home I am currently drinking a divine bean that goes by the interesting and amusing name of Guatemalan Elephant!

But a decent cup is becoming harder and harder to find in the high streets these days. "Surely you are mistaken!" I hear you cry "There are coffee houses in abundance these days, you're talking rubbish man!" OK, it is true, every other shop these days is a Costa's or a Starb**ks and "coffee culture" is something that cosmopolitan Brits like to think they are mastering. I have been lured into these "coffee shops" myself many a time, at first for a cappuccino or maybe a Mocha, which these shops do quite well. But as the novelty wore off and I exited my "cappuccino years"  (cappuccinos are really just very milky coffees and Mochas no more than a grown up hot chocolate) I began to crave harder stuff.

A typical attempt to purchase a proper coffee would proceed thus:

Me:         A cup of coffee please!
Coffee shop idiot assistant: Ugh?
Me:         A cup of coffee?
Idiot:         Coffee?
Me:         Yes.
Idiot:         Err. What sort?
Me:         Oh. Just an ordinary coffee ...please.
Idiot:         Err, with milk or without?
Me:         With please.
Idiot:         So... you want a Latte.
Me:         Oh no. No. Just an ordinary coffee, you know, a filter coffee?
Idiot:         Well, there's an Americano, but it don't have milk in it.
Me:        Is that just like black coffee?
Idiot:        Yeah.
Me:         Erm ok. Do you have milk I can add?
Idiot:         Yeah, of course we do.
Me:         Well I'll have one of those then.
Idiot:         What?
Me:         An Americano, I'll have an Americano please!
Idiot:         Regular or Large?
Me:         What's the differ... erm a regular, thanks.
Idiot:         That'll be £5.60 please.

This happened a few times. A request for a filter coffee would cause confusion and in the end be solved by the purchase of an "Americano".
What the fuck is an "Americano"? Where the hell did that come from? All of a sudden all coffee shops started selling this version of coffee supposedly from our cousins across the pond. The problem is, is that an "Americano" isn't a proper coffee at all! Sure, it has all the right ingredients, but they are put together all wrong and the end result is a disgrace!
The reason for all this is that an Americano is an espresso topped up with hot water. It sounds plausible enough. An espresso is a very strong coffee, water it down a bit and hey presto a regular coffee. Only it doesn't work like that. I don't know what chemistry goes on when a coffee is made but when it is done in such a way the results are seriously sub-standard.
Despite this it is getting increasingly harder to find coffee not prepared in this manner. A favourite little sandwich shop I frequented did a very good filter coffee, but that closed down (despite always being incredibly busy) and it took me a long time to find somewhere else that served ordinary good coffee.
Eventually I found a quaint little old fashioned café/restaurant that does a rather nice cafitiere with a decent choice of blends. But places like this are few and far between.

So why has Britain's café's and coffee shops all start serving this inferior beverage? I can only assume it has something to do with the big expensive cappuccino machines all cafes and coffee shops have these days, great for espressos, cappuccinos, mochas and the like but totally inadequate when it comes to a plain ordinary cup of coffee. The purchasing of a filter machine would solve the problem, but if you've just forked out hundreds of pounds on an all-singing all-dancing coffee-making contraption, the extra cost might seem hard to justify. And as long as the coffee-drinking public tolerate it why should they make an effort? Maybe I should start a campaign or even better open my own chain of decent coffee houses serving a wide selection of freshly ground blends and make myself a fortune ...maybe, but then again, maybe it's just me who cares...

The Toast Experiment!

How many little things does it take to make a big thing? – The tale of the failed toast experiment.

Seriously, how many little things does it take to make a big thing? Well, it depends on which side of the fence you sit on.
How many aspects of company rules that impinge on personal freedoms can an office lackey endure before he says enough is enough? Especially when the most draconian of these of seem to apply only to him or are translated in a way that are worse for him than others?
Examples:

The Toast Experiment!

The ample production of tea that is provided for the office by myself for consumption by all persons present (and thirsty) is an unwritten duty in the role of Office Lackey, and one which considering the circumstances, being that I am the least busy person and am happy for any excuse to evacuate my desk, it is something I am quite happy to do. In fact I take more pride in making a good cup of rosie than I do in any other aspect of office work.

Last week I passed up on the offer of a McDonalds's breakfast (more on MacD's later) and instead decided to use the facilities provided and make myself a much more dignified breakfast of hot buttered toast. The kitchen being equipped with a (much-neglected) toaster I saw no reason why this should cause any problems. And if all went well with this little experiment I thought I might make this a regular feature of my working life. So I came in that morning prepared with a couple of slices of bread and a small tub of  'I Can't Believe it's Not Butter' and when time came to make the mid-morning tea I popped the bread in the toaster and a couple of minutes later sat down to a nice brunch. I was just thinking to myself, "Mmmm I could get used to this!" When it was pointed out to me that making toast is a no no. At first I though this was a joke, but no, apparently the big boss wouldn't like me taking time out of my busy work schedule to make toast.

Mind you this seems to be an excuse for just about everything in this office... the big boss doesn't like it! I heard the other day that someone was ordered to take a pot plant home "because the big boss doesn't like that sort of thing"!!??!! I am sure the big boss (who is really a very big man!) couldn't give a shit about toast and pot plants, but hey...

So, OK, I don't have time to make myself toast, but making several cups of tea for the whole office I do have time for? Even though I made the toast while making the tea! Hmmm, something ain't right here. It seems to me that if it makes only me (or other people of "office lackey" status) happy and doesn't benefit my superiors then "the big boss won't like it". Sometimes I think if my bosses could find a good reason for it, they would ban me from making myself a cuppa, but still allow me to make one for them!
The trouble is that this is just another in a long line of petty rules and regulations that just make me think "Perhaps it's time to move on." I know the grass is never greener, but at least I get to be "naive" about the rules again.

Thousand Yard Stares

I once read about a Victorian scientist who was a renowned thinker, the human embodiment of Rodin's sculpture of the same name. However unlike the glorious pose the artist deemed fit for a person lost in the deep realms of contemplation, the scientist (who's name is itself buried deep in the forgotten regions of my own temporal lobes) would become so deep in though that he would become completely oblivious to his physical self and could often be found standing in the spot where he was last observed but with his head resting on the seat of a chair. This peculiar pose caused much hilarity with his servants, family and visitors alike.

So, in comparison, my occasional lapses into reverie, the moments when the soliloquies in my mind render my body temporarily immobile, do not seem worthy of much note, the main symptom being a distance look to my gaze and little else. So why this should cause of either merriment or concern to the people I share this world with is quite beyond me. The real shocking aspect of this to me is that I am apparently alone amongst my peers in this infliction. How is it possible for a fellow being not to have any thoughts deep enough or matters interesting enough to reflect upon for any duration longer than that of a single moment? I am often accused, quite fairly, of being a dreamer, the implication being that this is not a desirable trait in an adult of sound mind. Quite the contrary it seems to me that the ability of deep thought is an admirable one indeed. Certainly it was an intricate part to the greatness of the achievements of the aforemention! ed Victorian scientist whose name escapes me. It saddens me in my heart that the eccentric virtues of intelligence are often dismissed in modern society. I could well be argued that whilst some who are disposed with "thousand yard stares" are thinking of great things, many, like the school child oblivious to the monotonous tones of his teacher gazing absently out of the window, are merely thinking of whimsy and frippery. But without such ethereal thoughts as these would the world be blessed with poets and artists? Would, from these little acorns great oaks grow, if they were so disposed with stuffing their minds with fact, that they have no time to ponder on what this knowledge means and how it relates to the wider world?

...Probably. There are always smart Alecs who can think deeply whilst working or save such thoughts for another time, both of which I am wholly incapable of doing. But the point is however important or not these thoughts maybe it is a shame to let them wander off on unaccompanied into the sunset just because you don't have time to take a few minutes out of the banal day to day rigmarole you are faced with. You never know, if you give your thoughts room enough to grow you could be the greatest thinker of your generation!

Penguin - Posh biscuit or sub-standard choccy bar?

There was once a time when the humble Penguin was a trustworthy snack, falling as it does somewhere between (or should I say betwixed? ...erm,no.)biscuit and chocolate bar. It was this that made it such a good indicator of class. As a young boy I lived next door to a wealthly family whose mother was quite posh. She wouldn't let her sons watch Grange Hill as she deemed it too common and in their biscuit tin there were always Penguins and maybe a Breakaway or a Club. In our house these snacks fell well and truly into the special occasions only chocolate bar category, albeit a slightly sub-standard one. But whatever it's position was in the hierarchy of chocolatey snacks, in the intervening years, since "I were a lad", it has since declined, as I found out when I espied a tempting 2 for 1 offer at my local Co-op. The quality of the Penguin itself remains as it always had. A poor relation to the like of a Club perhaps, but still yummy. No, what dissapointed me was the wrappers. Traditionally penguins came in four different colur wrappers, red, blue, yellow, green, decorated with a picture of a penguin ...nice. At the time when I stopped paying attention to these thing on a regular basis the penguins on the wrappers were featured in different poses. This was a bit humourous and a bit of a novelty but still exceptable. Nowadays, much to my chargrin, they are now adorned with images of mobile phones, djing equipment and other tacky images. My memory doesn't recollect whether old penguins had jokes on them or not, but todays do. And what really made me cringe was one particular joke, which goes as follows;
Q. Whats Green and smells?
A. The Incredible Hulks Guff.
Erm, OK ...is this the worst kind of purile dross or what? Ugh! Ok some dumb moronic kids may find this kind of joke amusing, but that doesn't mean itis OK to put it on a choccy bar! I can imagine that if Penguins had been like this in my day then my posh neighbours would have certainly banned them, along with Grange Hill, from their house as being too common and rightly so! So where does this leave th humble Penguin Bar? Too common for posh people, too decadent for the plebs, it's only possible place it could be accepted is in the homes of well monied yobs. The sort of home where the kids have all that money can buy except manners and good taste. Shame.