I don’t drink it any more, the brown bitter stuff, but I do love sticking my nose right into a bag of freshly ground coffee. It’s almost as fresh as stepping outside on a mid autumn morning and feeling those cold tendrils snapping at the nasal passages. Ben used to have one of those Italian coffee pot things you put on the stove. It comes in two halves that screw together making to cones with funnels tapering outwards. The top one of course with a lid. A spoon or two of coffee in a compartment at the top and the water at the bottom. On the stove it heats up,  rattling on the glass element and then starts to cough and gargle and splutter. On the inside the steam is funneled through a trench of coffee. An acrid brown river of coffee juice forms. The pot is picked up by its bakelite handle and poured, a violent swirl of milk and the shot is ready. The expectant jolt, the taste of bitterness that leaks out from the dulled aluminium  coffee maker. Amazing. By the time its ready the kitchen has taken on the aroma of coffee and some part of my addictive personality flies back to when I did drink it in never ending freight trains, more more more, the need for more to get the high until I became immune. So now, nothing, that’s fine, tea is now the drink of choice, not half so strong as far as I can tell and I can walk away from it anytime. When the coffee has been consumed and the blood seems to be flowing quickly the pot get emptied and washed, coffee grounds adhere to the sink like a trail of lazy ants and the brown molasses of sludgey coffee slinks away down some drain to give some rat a kick.