I am partial to a good coffee, emphasis on the good. No Mellow Birds or Nescafe Gold Blend for me, in fact we don’t have instant coffee in the house. Even the workmen get the real stuff, though one poor plumber bounced his way out of the house juggling his spanners after drinking four double-shot cappuccinos.
One of our first major purchases was a decent and rather indecently-priced coffee maker, well, who needs furniture? You have to get your priorities right. It has lots of shiny chrome, a pressure tank that goes up to 11 and a serious-looking frother. It’s Italian, of course, so is very stylish, even the sound of the click of the ‘on’ switch is a thing of beauty. And we don’t just let any old coffee grace the grounds basket, our selected blends, ground to fit the machine, come all the way from that there London. Coffee’s too important to leave to the chance of the supermarket shelves.
While I wouldn’t call it an obsession, I certainly do insist on good coffee, and I like to remember where I had that coffee, making a mental note on whether or not to return. So for the past few years, I’ve kept a pictorial coffee diary, photographing most of the coffees I’ve drunk, and a couple I’ve send back because they’re undrinkable. For a bit of fun, I’ve made them into a mosaic, using Andrea Mosaic, a rather natty open source product. This mosaic is made from 5000 coffees, I’ve drunk them all. I’m still waiting for them to improve my running performance, I think it may be a delayed reaction, I’ll ask Mo.
Some write diaries, some keep a journal. Me? I record the highs and lows of life through the coffees I drink, or in the case of anything from Starbucks, sniff at and put to one side.
It all started in 2010 when Noel was away in Switzerland training to be a ski instructor. Yep, that’s right, I sleep with a ski instructor, cool or what? As I was traipsing backwards and forwards via Geneva (and becoming such an expert on the airport that it will be my specialist subject in Mastemind) there was one constant. Coffee. I drink it everywhere I go and usually have something to say about its quality and taste.
Seriously, if the house went up in flames, there would be two major rescues. The first would be the cross-stitch it took me two years to complete and the second would be our Rancilio Silva espresso machine. We love that machine, we even order our coffee from Drury Lane in that there London where they grind it to the exact calibration for our machine. We make the best coffee in Leeds and therefore the best in the world.
So everywhere I go, I photograph my coffee as a kind of caffeinated aide memoire. When I’m working, which isn’t as often as I’d like, I take my trusty mug with me and dare the baristas to fill it with something drinkable. The only condition is that no instant coffee touches my lips. Not ever.
My coffees this year have been on the ski slopes, trails, fells and (somewhat grudgingly) roads I have run, meals with friends, coffees alone. They have marked major purchases, which have a theme of sports-related activity reflecting my increasing reluctance to grow old with any kind of grace. And they have marked major events such as our fantastic experience as tourmakers for Le Grand Depart of the Tour de France in Yorkshire.
One heck of a year, an awful lot of coffee. I’ve no idea what 2015 has in store, but whatever happens, there will be a coffee tale to tell with it. Happy new year, everyone.
Catwoman after the fell race. It was a race, I fell. Twice.
It’s not everyone that can say they’ve run against both Olympic medal-winning Brownlee brothers in less than a week. Though when I say against, it’s more a case of crossing the same start and finish lines in the same event. The fact that they were back home tucking into their Christmas pudding, having showered, changed and updated their Facebook status by the time I got to the end of the the race is neither here nor there, my name is with theirs.
Yesterday the elder Brownlee, Alistair, showed me how to go down a muddy slope. He fell on his backside, but sprang up again with such agility that he made it look easy. It wasn’t, as I was to find out in the closing stages of the Auld Lang Syne fell race. I’d already done a full frontal flop in the thick smelly mud for no apparent reason except maybe that because it was there. Fortunately, being near the back of the pack, there was no-one around to give me a score for style and artistic interpretation, so I gave myself nine out of ten. The second fall was more of a sit and swear in the mud, so only scored five. Alistair scored ten, but in my defence, he was in the lead so the steep slope hadn’t been churned up by 1000 runners before him. As luck would have it there was a river we had to run through, so most of the mud was washed away. Every cloud, eh? Personally I think I should have had bonus points, or at least an extra bottle of beer, but there was none of that at the finish, so I snaffled some extra biscuits and a glug of coffee. It was heavenly, though I may also have swallowed a bleb of mud, at least I hope it was mud.
Six days previously his brother Johnny had beaten all comers in the slightly less muddy but longer Chevin Chase. I was there too, somewhere near the back, but, hey, we got the same tee-shirt!
My year had started with the 5km parkrun, and seen many miles, training and races, hot weather and cold, snow, ice, mud, rain and sun. I’ve worn out two pairs of shoes, lost so many pairs of gloves I can’t keep count and put a great strain on my sports bras, but they seem to be holding up. A glorious year of running, recorded in previous blogs.
And of course with every run, there has to be refreshment, and there is nothing like a good coffee, preferably with cake. Much to the amusement of fellow coffee drinkers, I continue the habit of photographing my coffees, it’s my way of keeping a diary – and reminding myself where and when I drank them and who with. These photos do confirm that the best coffees are those drunk in company of good friends and there’s been quite a bit of that over the past year.
So forward, hopefully at a faster running pace than last year, and onward to new adventures, let’s raise a cup of good coffee to 2014, I look forward to sharing one with you. Happy New Year everyone!
I just opened a can of custard and ate the lot. The thick, sweet, silky smooth Food of the Gods coated the inside of my mouth, glided over the stitches and found its way into a very empty tummy which growled with satisfaction.
The can joined the Heinz Tomato Soup empties in the recycling pile. It has been 48 hours since I voluntarily stepped over the threshold of the Leeds Dental Institute with my one remaining wisdom tooth, stubbornly sticking to my jawbone and redefining jaunty with its peculiar and rather useless angle. The next time I crossed it, just 30 minutes later the tooth was gone, though not without a fight.
“We’re going to have to drill it in half,” said Claire, the dental surgeon, in a matter-of-fact way which put me at ease. The equally professional nurse handed me a pair of cool-looking glasses, I was disappointed to find didn’t have some kind of virtual reality projection to take my mind off the drilling and ultimate cracking from that stubborn tooth. The nurse smiled, ‘this is the NHS,’ she laughed, ‘though I’ve heard the private practice have screens on the ceiling.’ ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I mumbled through four lots of local anaesthetic.
And so it began, I’ll spare the details, except to say I was congratulated for being brave and not freaking out with all the drilling, pushing, tugging, cracking and… oh I’ll leave it at that.
As I got up to go, I took a look at the cause of many infections requiring doses of that particular antibiotic which really doesn’t mix with alcohol. ‘Ah you bugger’, I cursed it, not for a moment thinking of taking it home to make into a stylish pair of earrings.
‘Thanks,’ I said to Claire and her team. And I meant it. I told them the horror story of the previous extraction at my dental surgery. The one where the dentist had a droplet of sweat rolling down his nose before he had to take a rest before resuming the attack on what was left of the tooth. In hindsight, that wasn’t a good experience.
So now it’s soft gloopy food for a few days, and plenty of custard and coffee, my drug of choice. I complained to Noel that I did look like I had the face of a hamster, but his assurances that on me it looked good didn’t stop me putting a bag on my head when I went out.
The task was simple. All I had to do was to turn up at the White Cloth Gallery and review the exhibition, our exhibition, There was absolutely no need to get involved with the coffee-making. But I did and it ended with one of us being sprayed with cappuccino froth.
I’d arrived slightly early, very excited to see Exposure Leeds’ collection of images from the streets, backstreets, markets and yards of our lovely city taken by fellow local photographers. The gallery is one of the city’s newest, focusing on photography and film, my favourites, with the added benefit of coffee and something a little stronger.
There was a meeting going on in the area I wanted to review, but with a top-of-the-range Rancilio, big brother to our own humble home coffee machine, sitting proudly behind the bar, I was as happy as a pig in muck made from coffee grounds. I could wait, I said.
University student Georgia, who helps out at the Gallery, confessed that as a non coffee-drinker, she couldn’t promise caffeinated perfection. That’s OK, I told her, we have one like this at home, I can help. What could possibly go wrong?
It’s all in the tamping, I told her. Good pressure on the grounds leads to a thick crema. And indeed, that was the case, she knew that, but was too polite to say so. The frothing was trickier, I gave unsolicited advice on nozzle positioning and jug angle. Just a little more, I told her. Ah. Not quite that much, as the froth left the jug and settled on her cheek. Maybe I’ll just leave you to it……. She was very sweet about it, though. And the coffee was excellent.
By this time, the meeting had broken up and I could view and review. It was good to see images in a gallery setting. I took mine when I spotted a tourist holding their cameraphone high to capture the magnificent ceiling in the Victoria Quarter, a photo of a photo, taken with my very favourite 50mm f1.4 prime lens.
As I stand there, cash in hand, waiting for the person behind the counter to finish their important conversation with their colleague about the viscosity of their ear wax, I want to shout at them ‘Am I TOTALLY invisible?’ or, in my crosser, more hormonal moments, ‘You’d know about it if you worked for me, you wouldn’t for long, there’s good people queuing up to do your job. And they’d do it better. And they don’t have ear wax! ‘
Of course, I don’t, I just resort to one of my telepathic messages of dissatisfaction and fix them with my Angry Stare which Noel says is very scary, and he doesn’t scare easily, except when I ask him to dance.
So when I handed over my insulated mug and asked for a tall skinny latte, the little madam behind the counter at Costa’s outlet at Trowell services on the M1 looked at me as if I had just crawled from under a slimy stone. She said petulantly, ‘I don’t know what that is’. Now it was early morning, I needed coffee, decent coffee, Costa coffee. But I had committed some kind of cross-competitor coffee sin, I had asked in Starbucks speak, where such a request gives me my drink of choice. For some reason, maybe it was the stupid o’clock time, I felt I had to apologise for asking for a drink using the language of a competitor.
“Can you help me out, here?” I asked, “I’m not sure what size fits in my environmentally-friendly mug, which Starbucks gives me a 25p discount for using”
“I don’t know,” she said unhelpfully, managing to avoid The Angry Stare, At that point I should have left it and gone down the road to Leicester Forest East where the Starbucks staff are always pleasant and welcoming. She wasn’t open to making a suggestion on which size, so I guessed, but it was hugely expensive, which I commented on in a HOW MUCH kind of fashion.
“Yes, we are more expensive,” she said, as if that was a good thing. “And we don’t give discounts for using your own mugs either”. Well that’s all right, then, I get the privilege of paying more, helping you contribute to global warming and putting up with bad attitude. Thank you very much, you’ll not be seeing me in your little Kingdom of Bad Service again. Which is a shame, because every other Costa I have ever been to, and there’s mots of those, I drink a lot of coffee, has been excellent.
Contrast that to the superb service I received today from two competitors. My quest for Canadian dollars was fast failing, it seems not many places stock them, not in Pudsey anyway. But the very helpful Amy at Thomson immediately phoned another outlet to ask, though they didn’t have any either. She suggested a competitor, the Post Office, then phoned them too as she didn’t want me to have a fruitless trip up the high street. Yes they did have dollars, she confirmed, then gave me directions not just to the Post Office, but to the location of the foreign money counter. I thanked her and said I was impressed with the service, even though they got no custom from me on this occasion.
On arrival at the Post Office, they had the dollars waiting for me, along with useful advice, which I will definitely take next time. We had a pleasant chat on the general wonderfulness of Canada, particularly for scenic skiing and I left the building, a very satisfied customer.
Good customer service costs nothing, but bad service costs custom. Three cheers for Thomson and the Post Office in Pudsey. A tall skinny latte in a Starbucks mug in the eye of that one member of Costa staff at Trowell.
Today I raced against an Olympian. Well, by that I mean that I was in the same event as triathalon bronze medallist Johnny Brownlee. The fact that he’d finished, changed and was back home tucking into turkey leftovers by the time I crossed the line, was neither here nor there. Nevertheless, he and I, along with 1000 other runners, had enjoyed the mudfest that was the Chevin Chase. Seven miles of mud and hills in God’s Own Country – Yorkshire.
And that’s the story of 2012 for me. The London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics were the absolute highlight that have brought me more tears of joy, thrills, pride and inspiration than I can ever remember. Whether it’s the Olympic anthem, or soundbites from the many winners and nearly-winners on radio and TV, I have loved every minute of it and never grow tired of experiencing it again and again.
They inspired me, all of them. From the arrival of the flame and its journey around the country to the 007-inspired opening ceremony with Her Majesty parachuting into the arena with not a hair out of place, how DID she do that? Then the games themselves, the first medals, Super Saturday, 4 August when we, Team GB, wupped the asses of all the other nations to win gold after gold after gold, I thought I was going to burst with pride. if truth be told, I still do.
Their triumph was my inspiration. My rather mediocre running achievements would never be competitive, but I was definitely stuck in a rut and wanted to do better. And do you know what? I did, personal best after personal best, then my first, but certainly not my last, half marathon.
It has indeed been a most wonderful year, best summed by by the inspirational paralympian Jonnie Peacock who won gold in the 100 metres sprint. I’m no lipreader, but as the 19-year-old sizzled past the finish, he clenched his fists in triumph, exclaiming, “F#@king get in!!’ 2012? Jonnie, I’m with you, f#@king get IN!!
Along with the pure joy of the Olympics, I have had a wonderful year of coffee, it’s three years since I have started a coffee diary, my days in coffee, I do drink an awful lot of it. The photo above is just a few of them from this year, but each one tells a story. What will 2013 bring?
