Smell the coffee...

I blend my own coffee from three types of bean in an old, almost antique, grinder I bought from an old coffee shop in Lincoln. I’m not talking about one of those awful places that give away tokens and free we-fi, I’m talking about a seller of coffee beans.

The smell in that shop was almost unbelievable, so rich and dark that you could almost taste the coffee in the air. They roasted their own beans on the premises and the coffee smell had seeped into the wood of the dark, coffee stained, oak counter. My grandmother took me there a couple of times when I was a boy and I waited patiently while they hand ground the beans for her coffee; so when I heard they were closing I bought one of their old grinders online.

I like my coffee strong and black with just enough bitterness to almost bring a tear to my eye. I have no time for cappuccinos, lattes, cortados, ristrettos, or any of that other nonsense. I like to taste the coffee, black coffee made from three types of beans; Nigerian beans, beans from Eastern China, and a very bitter bean that is grown along the banks of the Amazon. I roast the beans myself in a small coffee oven that I bought on ebay for less than a tenner. It’s a bit scratched and battered but it’s the real thing with an old coffee blackened tray to spread the beans out on.

It isn’t a quick process making coffee; it takes me almost three days to get enough ground coffee to make about 20 cups. My coffee is precious and I drink it from a Clarice Cliff coffee cup I bought at a car boot for 50p before car boots became collector's fairs. Alas, there is no saucer and there’s a tiny chip at the base, but it has the decadence of art deco and history. I often wonder just who may have sipped from my cup.

Yes, there’s nothing like my coffee, it tastes like shit but it's special; particularly when you paint with it.