caffeine – Hannah Jane Thompson

Like, a LOT. (From the fabulous cardboardlove.com)

I love coffee. I mean, this is the minor (yet verbose) emotional breakdown I suffered when I realised some time ago that I was regularly drinking instant rather than filter or espresso coffee due to a lack of options at my then-work. I pay stupid sums of money to Pret a Manger pretty much every morning for my caffeine fix, yet consider my habits among the more restrained of many.

I also harbour dreams of one day going to work and live in New York for a bit – when I was lucky enough to go a couple of years ago, it seemed like a city that would be fairly exhilarating to get to know…similar to London in many ways (frantic, bustling, public transport, shops, restaurants, bars, late-night cafes) but different in so many others (all-night pie shops, huge chemists selling all manner of random foodstuffs, yellow cabs, wide boulevards, hot-dog and pretzel street vans, fire escapes, numbered streets, skyscrapers…oh and also Diet Snapple, which I HAVE NEVER SEEN in the UK but loved when I was in NY).

Cue, infographic uniting these two life joys. Lovely.

Things that do not surprise me:

80% of Londoners drink coffee daily
I drink about the same as the average (2.3)
London’s most expensive cup is a *lot* more than New York’s (SIGH)

From Now. Here. This – TimeOut London

Good advice…..

I have a confession to make. It’s shameful, debasing and goes against my principles. But somehow, it’s happened, it’s real, and I have to admit it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am now a regular drinker of…instant coffee. The realisation hit me slowly, recently, percolating not unlike the better quality of its kind, until I could ignore it no longer. How, I asked myself with growing horror, had this happened?

Coffee. Le café. Il caffè. It seems so simple. So evocative. Ever-present; the first thing I drink in the morning, nice and milky to get the day going. Aromatic and black to wake me up in the mid-afternoon; later skipped in favour of herbal tea to signal the winding down of the working day; smooth and decaffeinated in the evening before bed – and on particularly special occasions, short, strong and full-bodied as a sharp end to a good meal.

Caffeine in the evenings has never seemed to bother me. Maybe my actual sleep is disturbed (who knows?), but basically, I go to sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow (it’s getting into bed in the first place without procrastinating for hours on end beforehand that’s my problem). Coffee presents the punctuation to my life, and, aside from the days when I decide that from here-on-in that I’m a solely-green-tea, holistic, my-body-is-a-temple kinda girl (very short-lived), that’s how I like it. But…instant? Please.

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