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Coffee

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Ah, coffee. Where would I be without it? It sustains my all-nighters and propels me out of morning (and afternoon) inertia into activity. In fact, there's a cup of the stuff sitting next to me as I type. It wasn't until Star Trek: Voyager's captain pointed to her viewscreen and proclaimed "There's coffee in that nebula!" and then sent her ship after the magic coffee-making particles that I fell in love with an admittedly flawed series. They had the right attitude to my beloved coffee, and that covered a multitude of sins in my eyes.

Furthermore, coffee has long been beloved of writers. My compatriot, Jonathon Swift - he of "Gulliver's Travels" fame - wrote that:

A fig for partridges and quails,
ye dainties I know nothing of ye;
But on the highest mount in Wales
Would choose in peace to drink my coffee.

The combination of quiet, comfort, beauty and coffee is irresistible to the active writer. For those turning over ideas and concepts in their overburdened brains, Swift advised that coffee makes us 'severe, and grave, and philosophical'.

Several centuries later Honore de Balzac described the galvanising effect of coffee on the writer in more evocative prose. Because of coffee, he stated, 'Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield ... Things remembered arrive at full gallop ... The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition ... Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink...'. A glance at any compilation of coffee related quotes on the web contiues this trend : coffee and writers go together as inextricably as pen and ink.

One interesting aspect of coffee's history is the fact that until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries British and Americans considered it as both a luxury and essentially a male drink. In 1674 'several thousands' of 'buxom good women' submitted a satirical "Women's Petition Against Coffee", that described the glorious substance as 'that drying, enfeebling liquor' that made their men turn their backs on good old English ale and spend their money on that 'newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor called COFFEE' which apparently rendered them impotent. Evidently, the coffee-widows were ignored, for coffee prevailed and now recent statistics state that the coffee consumption of women is only slightly lower than that of men.

Nor is coffee as enfeebling as its seventeenth century detractors claimed. According to WebMD, coffee can dramatically slash your risk of developing life changing conditions such as diabetes or Parkinson's, reduce your chances of getting colon cancer, treat your headaches and lift your mood. And there you thought all those good feelings came from the obligatory sweet stuff that accompanies your cafe du jour.

Coffee, you see, if taking over the world. Starbucks. Costa. The multidue of coffee shops and houses that are feeling our towns and cities and returning us to the seventeenth century golden age of coffee houses, where the dark beverage and conversation reigned supreme. Coffee. Not, you notice, tea. Tea does appear in all of these places, but as an afterthought; an also-ran. Tea is relatively simple, whereas coffee is endless in its versatility and complexity.

Who, after all, would want a cup of tea when they can have a glorious mug of mocha, where the sweetness of chocolate mingles seductively with the bitterness of the coffee, and thus grants a a small touch of self-indulgence and luxury in our increasingly cash-straitened times.

Learn more about this author, Lisa Townsend.
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