I did not know what coffee really was until I was 14 years old.
asserted
I → know → ?
My first taste of it was a great revelation, and I have never got over it.
asserted
I → get → it
Now I can hardly find the real thing anywhere outside my own kitchen.
asserted
I → find → kitchen
Just as proper music has been driven out of our lives by guitars and drums, proper coffee has been displaced by a bitter ocean of headache-inducing espresso on one side, and a great lake of instant brown liquid on the other.
asserted
coffee → drive → other
I drink these things because they are better than nothing.
asserted
they → drink → nothing
Drown the espresso in a bucket of milk and it can be bearable, under the right conditions.
asserted
it → drown → conditions
Instant coffee is all right if you don’t think of it as coffee, but as a different drink, something warm, wet and inoffensive to punctuate the livelong day.
asserted
you → think → day
Until 1965, I used to drink a lot of the tinned powdered instant version of the time, disgustingly sugared.
asserted
I → use → time
My brother and I, in our provincial, suburban ignorance, thought it faintly sophisticated.
asserted
it → think → ignorance
Those were also the last days of ‘frothy coffee’, served in glass cups and saucers in pretentious fake-Italian cafes, and tasting roughly as you might imagine a donkey would taste.
uncertain
donkey → serve → cafes
Powdered instant was certainly better than the bottled substance, also known as coffee, which my grandfather mixed with boiled milk as his mid-morning refreshment.
asserted
grandfather → powder → refreshment
Amazingly, you can still get Camp Coffee.
asserted
you → get → Coffee
And I noticed some years ago that its once-imperialist label had been radically altered to suit the multicultural times.
asserted
label → notice → times
They might perhaps have been better occupied reforming the contents.
uncertain
They → occupy → contents
I don’t think I would drink it now.
asserted
I → think → it
And then came the great discovery.
asserted
discovery → come → ?
I had won a scholarship to school and my parents generously asked me what I would like to do to celebrate it.
asserted
I → win → it
I knew immediately.
asserted
I → know → ?
We must go, I insisted, on the Golden Arrow, from Calais to Paris.
asserted
I → go → Paris
The Golden Arrow, long before Eurostar and the Chunnel, was a beautiful way to go to Paris by super-comfortable train.
asserted
Arrow → go → train
The best bit came after you had picked your way across the tracks at Calais, and been through the freezing French customs shed (it was December).
asserted
it → come → shed
There we were given a compartment to ourselves, in a beautiful old-pre-war blue and gold Pullman car (not the ludicrously perfect type you get on the Orient Express now).
asserted
you → give → Express
As the train steamed (it did steam then) towards Paris, we were served a feast of beautifully cooked food.
asserted
we → steam → food
And after the apple tart came the coffee, each cup with its own battered metal filter.
asserted
cup → come → filter
And at that moment I was seduced by France.
asserted
I → seduce → France
I had never tasted anything like it before and I have spent quite a lot of time and effort since, trying to reproduce that first delight.
asserted
I → taste → delight
The rest of the meal had been superb, as expected.
asserted
rest → expect → meal
But this coffee altered my entire view of the world.
asserted
coffee → alter → world
If I could get hold of it again, and keep doing so, my life would be transformed for the better.
uncertain
life → get → better
I knew for the first time what coffee actually was, or at least what it was supposed to be.
asserted
it → know → what
The word had altered its meaning in the internal dictionary of my mind.
asserted
word → alter → mind
How can I explain it?
asserted
I → explain → it
It tasted the way freshly ground coffee smells.
asserted
coffee → taste → way
I could have drunk it black, but preferred it with hot milk.
uncertain
I → drink → milk
There were many good things about that first visit to Paris – a thing nobody ever gets over.
asserted
nobody → be → Paris
We were there smack in the middle of Charles de Gaulle’s first proper election since he had seized power in 1958, and his mischievous visage, with its enormous nose, hung over everything.
asserted
visage → seize → everything
So I should mention here the great man’s own view on English coffee.
asserted
I → mention → coffee
Brought a cup of it at the Foreign Office after he had arrived in London for the first time in 1940, he is supposed to have asked: ‘Ah, is this perhaps the famous English tea?’
asserted
this → bring → 1940
Whether he was joking or not, there simply was no relation between proper French coffee, as it was then, and the fluid served under that name in England.
asserted
it → joke → England
Like all brief visions of wonderful things, this one has spoiled me.
asserted
one → spoil → me
…and 25 more, not listed.
The Aporia
