Did anybody actually drink coffee in the 70s and early 80s? Everyone I knew drank tea from an early age, but the only coffee you could get was that nasty freeze-dried stuff, and although there might have been a jar in the cupboard, I think it was only there for if we had a weird workman in.
By the time I reached my late teens, I was drinking a lot of tea. A large teapot full every night. And because I don't like milk, I was drinking it black and strong. Three bags.
I've written before about how I was invited in for coffee after my first date, and I didn't even like coffee, but coffee was all that was on offer. I'm covering old grounds here (you see what I did there?), but I ended that post by explaining that I finally ended up a coffee drinker when I started using the Klix vending machine to keep me awake on nightshift. There weren't a lot of great options from that machine. The tea was white only - at least you could get coffee black. Beyond that, there was a hot lemon drink that tasted like wallpaper stripper... and a sub-sub-Bovril effort that I once tried in desperation and can still taste how disgusting it was 30+ years later.
You date a girl and find out later
She smells like a percolator
Her perfume was made right on the grill
They've got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil
I don't know when I first tried a proper coffee, maybe as an after dinner treat in a restaurant, but it changed my life forever. Nowadays, there are more coffee shops in the UK than there are pubs, but back then there were hardly any. The interweb tells me that coffee shop culture was a big thing in the swinging '60s but died away when people discovered instant coffee in the 70s and 80s. This confirms something I've long suspected: the general public are idiots.
Various articles online suggest that the UK coffee shop resurgence happened in the 1990s as a result of young Brits watching the Friends characters hang out in Central Perk. It may seem hard to believe now, but the first UK Starbucks didn't open till 1998. I'm not particularly a fan of Starbucks - a bit too close in texture to the Klix Vending Machine Gravy - but I will drink it as a last resort. Unlike Neil Young...
My preferred chain, Caffè Nero, opened its first in that London in 1997, so I'm guessing they didn't get to the rest of the UK till well into the noughties. I remember when the Bradford branch opened; I was working radio advertising and it became a daily ritual to walk across Bradford in the afternoon for a proper Americano. By then, I was pretty much a coffee addict.
And the long black dream is over
As the snow falls on and on
And it takes five cups of coffee
To calm down before I sleep
That addiction only grew when I became a teacher, but all that caffeine clearly wasn't doing a lot to help with the anxiety caused by the pressure of working at The Bad Place.
Nowadays I'm mostly a two coffees a day man, and visits to coffee shops have become a luxury rather than a necessity... who can afford at nearly £4 a pop? That said, I always feel more relaxed in a coffee shop than I ever felt in a pub. Even when I was a drinker, I found pubs to be intimidating places. And not just because of the stress of getting served at a crowded bar. I know I'm in the minority here - most people find pubs to be welcoming places, but I never felt like I belonged... even when I was handing over a small fortune for a double Jack Daniels and Coke. (I dread to think how much my former beverage of choice costs these days... one more reason to be grateful for being tee-total.)
My dad became a coffee drinker later in life, and I wonder if my love of strong black coffee was in some way an attempt to emulate or connect with him? Although Sam's way too young to indulge, he spends a lot of time in coffee shops with me... in the same way I guess many parents might have taken their kids into family pubs when they were growing up, to acclimatise them to that culture. Although he liked a pint of lager and lime from time to time, my dad wasn't a big drinker and I never went to the pub with him.
Some men drink alcohol
Some men drink juices from the vine
But as for me I'm very simple
Give me coffee every time
Every Saturday morning, about ten a.m. (once the Snapshots excitement has died down), Sam and I stop off at the local Co Op cafe before starting the weekly shop. I have an Americano, Sam has an Appletiser, and we both have a pastry. We sit and talk... it's good father and son time. The highlight of my week.
It wouldn't be my coffee shop of choice... but any excuse to watch this video again...