Whilst I am not the most patriotic person in the world I am in possession of a few characteristics that are quintessentially British. One such example is talking about the weather on a daily basis, and indeed, complaining about it, but today is a beautiful spring day, so there is no need to go down that route at the moment...
Another is that I love my tea, milk no sugar, a strong, well-brewed "builder's" tea. Mmm, just lovely. And none of that fancy stuff please. No green tea, no flower or fruit flavoured pond water, and please no Earl Grey or any other miserable weak flavour that exists.
I average about five or six cups a day it; is my favourite drink. Usually all the caffeine fix I need is a strong cup of tea when I wake up in the morning, and I'm ready for the rest of the day. Sometimes however, I am traitorous to my love of tea, and I enter the opposing world of coffee *shock horror*
Now, coffee is quite nice. But only when it is sweet. And herein lies the problem. Whenever I have a coffee one sugar doesn't suffice. Neither does two. Three sometimes does, but my preferred dosage is four. My boyfriend, family and friends all find this outrageous and look at me as though I am lacing my occasional cappuccino with drugs. So it is rare that I drink coffee. That, and I seem to be intolerant to it, as every time I drink it, it gives me a tummy ache and nausea.
By now you are probably thinking that it is not worth me bothering to drink coffee and in that I guess you would be right.
One day, when I was in my third year at university, I decided I wanted to be more sophisticated (erm...was going through a weird phase obviously), and I wanted to drink more coffee, but wean myself off the sugar habit. My best friend persuaded me this was a good idea and that after approximately nineteen cups without sugar my brain would have become accustomed to coffee that was no longer sweet. It seemed a fair experiment. What I didn't reckon on at this time was how hard this would be to maintain when I was in Brazil. I went on a short-term mission with my university church to Recife on the North-East coast about a week or so after making this pledge to no longer sweeten coffee, and I found the Brazilian coffee very good but difficult to drink. Then a member of my team exclaimed in dismay that I was mad for drinking it unsweetened. He declared that Brazilian coffee was meant to be sweet, and introduced me to the syrup they had, which you only needed a smidgen of to make it taste like my usual four sugars, only better. Yummy - interestingly Brazilian coffee didn't make me feel sick either XD
So as you can gather I failed on the quest to becoming a sophisticated coffee drinker with no need of the saccharine. So what? I hardly drink it anyway.
But...but...but...I always think it's a good idea to have coffee at the time, and then I nearly always regret it afterwards. This morning I felt exceptionally tired, having gone late to bed last night and then waking up earlier than usual. My normal morning cup of tea had done little to snap me out of my zombie-like state, so as I walked past the very good independent coffee shop just a few doors down from my office I had to nip in and grab a takeaway coffee. The guy asked me how many sugars I wanted, and too embarassed by my usual four, I settled for three, which was bad enough! Anyway, it did the trick. I soon felt alert and ready to take on the day at work. But only a few minutes had passed before my tummy began to hurt :( And so the coffee had beaten me again. And the stupidity of it was that I knew that would happen, doh!
Was it worth it? Well I eventually felt better, but this afternoon I was back to my trusty cup of tea. And I think that is what I should stick to. Although I know deep down I will betray tea and resort to coffee again... It's only a matter of time.
But the Brazilians and my boyfriend do make good coffee, that doesn't make me ill, so there is hope yet. Just don't tell the tea leaves...
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