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Nespresso
I work in an office that has a small Nespresso machine that's been in near-constant use by about 30 people for at least two years. You take a pod, jam it into a slot at the top, press a button and after a few seconds of loud straining a stream of coffee sputters messily out in a way that reminds me it's about time to start taking the state of my prostate seriously. →
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A Starbucks Experience
My usual chain coffee establishment of choice is Caffé Nero; the coffee is good enough, they sell those little praline chocolates, the premises are generally clean and the background music tends to be of a pleasing Italian theme. Essentially it's somewhere I can go to feel like an Italian without being molested by Berlusconi. →
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Decaffeinated
Feeling in an experimental and somewhat jittery mood, I decided to stop drinking coffee for a short spell, to see what would happen. →
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Tea and Chocolate
The transition from Summer to Autumn in the UK is usually a fairly swift one; one week the sun is blazing high in the sky, the next week everyone's wearing three layers in order to dress for both hot and cold temperatures, and finally this is followed by that week of unusual stillness, where the sun is out, there isn't a cloud in the sky, and you can see your breath fogging up the air before you. Then it rains for the next three months. →
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Café con Lechery
It's that time of year again when I start using up my annual leave allowance, which is almost always spent lounging around in Oxford parks and cafés because I lack imagination, money, and sufficient gumption to get out and do something less boring instead. This year, my first five days of leave coincided with the wettest May since 1983. →
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Café Culture
When spending a significant amount of time in a town or city, there are two things I like to be sure of; one is where I can get a decent cup of coffee in nice surroundings, and the other is where I can go to the toilet. I'm about to write about the former, because an article about the latter would just list 'Debenhams; by the Covered Market; underneath Magdalen Bridge', and wouldn't be much of a read. →