Snow and steam

I've not been in a Starbucks in years, and it's not just because their coffee tastes like it was gathered, by time machine, from a leper colony bilge in the middle ages. It's because, as I rediscovered the other day, corporate coffee saps your will to live.

If you are as infantile as me, you'll have a special sense hard-wired into your brain that tells you when it's been snowing. The (special, clean) sunlight hits the snow, rebounds and lights up the bedroom, penetrating curtain, duvet and eyelid and going straight to the part of the brain that has, only in the last few years, evolved from announcing 'Ice-Age!' to 'snowman!'.

Indeed, that special quality of light was caused by it being deep, and crisp, and even. I woke up with a sense of wonder rather than dread and made my way outside.

For this was indeed real snow. The snow of youth, the sort that is light and feathery until you fashion it into a snowball shape, when it becomes a deadly ball of ice that is capable at being launched at around the same sort of speed as a comet. Like comets, the centre of snowballs are often solid, formed as they are not around iron but around a decent sized stone, rock, half-brick or, if you're like me, rapidly thawing fox-shit - that is about to be delivered at speed to one of those little oiks that no doubt contribute to the litter in my front garden.

Little known fact - you can throw a snowball at a kid and, when he turns round in angry confusion, he looks right past the adult - who is actually clearing snow from the top of his car! - and look for another kid. How stupid are these kids? Certainly, they are stupid enough to smell of fox-shit once their anoraks thaw.

So three inches of powder brought joy to me but transport misery to millions. To be honest, it also brought transport misery to me. The first thing you lose when you skid on snow and fall on your ass...it's not keys or tissues or your brief-case...it's dignity.

I had made it about three yards from my front door...that's EXACTLY the length of time it takes to think 'good traction', before your ass is making Issac Newton proud. My law of shame = angle incident causes you to vary from vertical x number of witnesses. So falling on my ass in front of three school girls was somewhat shaming.

Mincing my way to the railway station was not a problem as, thoughtfully, most trains were cancelled. This gave me time to go get a coffee.


A new coffee place has opened in the village. Previously we've had independent places but, obviously realising that there's money to be made in a place with this many 4x4s, Costa has moved in.

I went in expecting great things. In the summer I had tried the frozen coffee thing they do and discovered that caffeine and sugar, combined in sufficiently high doses, can actually be more fun than alcohol...and crack.

I left a (much) older and wiser man, swearing to myself that if I did call at this place again, it would only to be to urinate through the letterbox.

The barrista was so slow it was painful...and this is an issue. It's an issue because everything to do with coffee should be FAST! (if not instant) and it's an issue because being slow near one of those big, hissing, steaming machines that spit coffee is a crime.

It's all about steam.

Let me explain.

Men love steam. We love it so much that we sit in rooms of it with other men, dressed in towels. But most of all we love steam when it's under tremendous pressure hurling several thousand tons of locomotive down a track. That's steam, it's important, steam powered the industrial revolution and is the reason that Britain is what it is today...the greatest country on the face of the globe. We can't help it, we had a head start.

So, when I see a chap in front of a great steaming, frothing, spitting machine I see a man, a footplate, a hungry engine, 200 tons of coal, a shovel and the London to Edinburgh land speed record to break. In short, if you are a barrista you are master of the steam, you juggle, you dance. Cups of coffee are conjoured. The nozzles should be spewing like a lactating pig and the the air should be filled with Spanish oaths as the barrista scalds himself theatrically.

However, in a world filled to bursting with Continental types, they have chosen to hire local talent. This means minimum wage. This means somebody that, until last Tuesday, did not know what coffee was.

(NOBODY in this country knows what coffee is until they hit thirty. We all drink tea, it's great, it's better than coffee. The only reason we all start drinking coffee at thirty is either to appear sophisticated, because we can't be bothered to wait until the water infuses our tea because we need out caffeine NOW goddamit, or because we're thirty and, as we can't get hold of any crack, coffee if the only thing that's going to lift this hangover and get us through the morning. The first time you taste proper coffee is when you go abroad.)

Proper coffee comes in very small cups and has a half life.

Meanwhile, 'Pronto' is moving at a speed so slow that I actually think that the next Ice Age is upon us and that, acne apart, this chap is the tip of a glacier. I eventually got my coffee, it's a wonder it wasn't cold.

He betrayed the spirit of the steam.

I love steam engines. The smooth, oiled cylinder plunging, the hiss, the noise, the heat the thunder. Growing up, going to see them was a treat (steam fares, not an unnaturally prolonged life-span starting with the industrial revolution) and they always meant the same thing - excitement!

This excitement lives and breaths again as my espresso jug twitches and dances on the hot plate every weekend and that's why coffee is fun - because it's the product of alchemy.

As for Costa, I'm beginning to see why their speciality is cold coffee. I'll stick to my local independent - volcanic coffee at a strength you can trust at a speed you like.