I'll drink to that

Once upon a time there was a dailykeith who drank instant coffee with chicory mixed in.

As I utter the words 'Mellow Birds' and 'Maxwell House', an ice cold shiver runs down my spine and I can smell again the strange aroma of roasted cardboard.

Coffee itself was an unwelcome guest given the shortest shrift.

Looking back on those dark days, it's hard to believe I irrigated my body with that concoction.

It's been a long journey since then on the road to coffee heaven, but I think I might have finally arrived.

For after finally growing up with filter coffee, then moving on to grinding my own beans and flaunting a cafetiere, I now have a device that takes me light years from that instant desert.

This is my espresso machine. It does everything those large, silver, noisy devices in Costa do, but the end product is always deliciously, stimulatingly wonderful.

It even steams and froths the milk. The only thing it doesn't do is put the chocolate on the top of a capuccino - but that's easy to fix.

The only danger of treading this exciting path (apart from having a caffeine overdose) is becoming a coffee snob.

My wife and I like sampling different types of coffee and recently I've even been considering spending something like £15 to have a packet of Spanish torrefacto coffee flown over.

Maybe it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.