On an average day, 87.6 per cent of my Instagram feed is coffee. There it is, with its latte art, muffin, gel nails and carefully chosen, intelligent but non-alienating paperback. It’s a pretty picture, and we’re all liking away like billy-oh. More than liking: In September, the BBC’s Lucy Hooker reported that we are almost at high-street-coffee saturation point. In the UK we now buy around 2.3 billion cups per year from coffee shops, according to market researchers Allegra.
My own relationship with the bean is complicated. I seem to have reached the age when I have to have a relationship with something rather than just eat or drink it. My ecosystem is as fragile as the Great Barrier Reef. One false move and I don’t sleep, I become anxious, puff, bloat, knock things over. Let’s not even get started on my relationship with alcohol, unless you’re volunteering to foot my therapy bills.
Watch a kid’s face when they first try coffee. But we valiantly push on, because those who don’t like it are perceived as infantile. Is it nice or is it not? Better have another sip... Sometimes it’s too strong; sometimes not strong enough. It’s often bitter. It can be tricky to get the roast just right. My God, for a simple morning pick-me-up, coffee is a high-maintenance drink. Recently I visited a friend who’s fallen hard for the stuff. The gateway drug was Illy and the kind of espresso machine you can buy in John Lewis. Now, she has settled on a machine that cost as much as most of my cars, a very fancy giant grinder (critical), and the Kata blend from Bradford-based specialist importers Limini – a mix of Brazilian and Guatemalan beans. Granted, it makes a very fine cup indeed: smooth and chocolatey. Now, though, coffee almost anywhere but home is a sore disappointment. Talk about a rod for your own back. What Oscar Wilde said about a cigarette is equally true of coffee: ‘It is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?’ It’s the extent to which coffee falls short of the ideal coffee of our imagination – or indeed of its actual smell – that keeps us hooked.
There’s also the sense of community. It’s a small touchstone we can reach for to make us feel we’re all on the same page. We walk to work clutching our paper cup – or now, hopefully, our re-useable one – and glance across the street at another human doing likewise, and smugly think, it’s OK: I am among my people. I will get through today.
But that’s just it. I’ve come to realise that coffee doesn’t help me get through my day, at all. It does the opposite. A few sips in, the anxiety starts to rise. It’s subtle. I’ll be looking at my computer screen, working away. Shit, I think – I never paid that bill for that school trip. Mid-sentence, I’ll flick to another window and start entering my password. But midway through paying the bill, I think, fuck, it’s Pierre’s birthday this week and I never got him those go-karting tickets. Flick. Flick, flick. Everything crowds in like the Furies. I sow and reap angst and irritation all around. And it doesn’t even end there: trifling problems haunt my waking nights. After an eight-hour session of duvet-wrestling, it’s all too tempting to have another coffee just to see if it’ll help me haul myself over the low bar of getting dressed and getting the kids to school.
I’d always thought of coffee as the chipper, cheery friend who always had my back, while alcohol was the wrong crowd, dangerous to know, luring me to the dark side, solipsism, moral turpitude, not giving a damn.
It’s not that simple. If you get it just right – strength, flavour, volume – it can give you a nice buzz. I’ll give it that much. Overdo it by a grain, and this so-called friend will turn on you. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.