Saturday, 3 February 2018

Instant Coffee

A poem from 2017

When I was young there was only instant coffee
Well, when I say “only”, if there was anything else I certainly don’t remember it
Maybe we were just too poor or not adventurous enough
Well, now I come to think of it, there was Camp Coffee
That liquidy brown stuff with chicory taste
You can imagine how that excited the mind of a young child in the 70s!

I liked instant coffee and when I went to live abroad in my 20s all they had was filter coffee
I didn’t like it but had no choice
(And if you think I could have drunk their tea
Well, their “black tea” was muck)
I don’t remember why I didn’t like it
I just remember it as a fact
But, when in “Rome”...
And so I put up with it
I returned to England some years later
And it was back to good old instant!

Something has happened to me since
I don’t know what
The country in general has gone coffee mad
Actually, I could leave out the word “coffee” from that sentence and it would still be true
That’s another story for another day, but maybe I should consult a lawyer first?
Now, you can’t just go out and buy a coffee
They’ve gone so diverse with stupid names and the waitresses don’t even know what some of them are
I tend to stick with Americano
I’ve gotten used to that
And it’s the cheapest option
Mind you, drinking coffee in a cafe is only for when I’m on holiday
I don’t get why people pay more for a coffee in a cafe than they would for a whole packet or jar in a supermarket
They’ll subsequently moan about living standards and cutbacks and plead poverty
But I digress…

These days I still drink instant coffee for convenience
But I actually prefer filter
When I say “filter”, of course I mean in a “cafetiere”
This is what has happened to me and what I was going to say before i got sidetracked
But here’s the latest thing
(Well, it probably isn’t the latest thing, but hey…)
Barista-style wholebean instant coffee
The best of both worlds
The convenience of instant
Less washing up than a cafetiere
And with an upgraded taste that makes it like an Americano

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