Wednesday, 2 February: Who's for a cuppa?

If I was an artist, I would paint a still life of this gorgeous expresso served to Trudie and I in teeny kitchen shop in Nimes, Provence. We actually did not require a cuppa; our needs were more basic and pertained to the use of the Ladies Room. But if we had to down an expresso to clinch the deal, that was fine. And what a work of art our expresso was, accompanied by its chocolate-coated almond. I have never mastered the art of throwing back the contents of a miniscule cup with a cube of sugar clenched between my teeth, but I enjoy an occasional expresso taken straight after a heavy meal.

Alas, my heavy coffee-drinking days are over. I could hold my own with any coffee-holic, consuming cup after cup of black filtered brew every morning. Today, I manage a single daily mug of home made cappucino, half coffee and half frothed 2% milk whipped with my handy Aerolatte. My earliest coffee drinking experiences were cups of milky Nescafe served to my brothers' friends. Coffee was for grown ups and grown up I felt at 16, when instant coffee became part of Mom's shopping list.

A sojourn in the modern day Namibia (then South West Africa) taught Richard and I that life was too short for poor coffee. Coffee beans had to be bought freshly ground from Woermann and Brock and brewed with filtered water. A habit I have never lost.