Coffee Break

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven..."
Right now, it's time for coffee.

“Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.”
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand 1754-1838

I wasn't always a coffee drinker. For the first twenty-two years of my life I was all about tea... I don't actually remember when I was too young to drink tea. For all I know, my baby bottle was filled with milky tea.

I didn't like coffee at all back then.

I blame my parents. They drank instant. Seriously? Who would forsake tea for instant coffee? On special occasions my mother would perk coffee. By that point in the evening her guests had so much food and drink they didn't notice how bad it was. Or maybe they were too polite.

I'm not being mean. Mum would have been the first to admit she did not have the knack of brewing coffee. She was English after all. Most of the time she drank tea and her tea was excellent. 

When I went to university, the tea was terrible. Sure, I could bring my own, but they charged the same for a cup of hot water as a cup of coffee. Worse, tea doesn't keep you awake when you have three papers to complete in twenty-four hours. That's what drove me to coffee. Since I wasn't crazy about it, bad coffee didn't bother me.

“I don't really like coffee," she said, "but I don't really like it when my head hits my desk when I fall asleep either. ”
Brian Andreas

I'm not sure when the turning point came... maybe it was when I was hanging out at cafes writing longhand fan fiction when I was supposed to be writing essays... but I became a coffee drinker.

Back in my fan fic days, I preferred flavoured coffee. When I was Captain of the Guelph Star Trek Club I had my own "Captain's Blend". (Two parts Colombian dark roast to one part Dutch chocolate flavoured beans.) I started drinking straight dark roast about the same time I started writing mysteries. Coincidence? I think not.

When my sister started her own communication and marketing business,  I suggested the name BelleFare. It was a play on the street where we grew up, Bellefair, and the idea that she served up good communications. I still have notepaper with the business name, coffee cup logo and the following quote:

“Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee...”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Whether writing fiction, nonfiction or advertising copy, which is a bit of both, coffee is what gets me going and keeps me going when I'd rather have a cuppa and curl up with Netflicks. Of course, emails, Facebook (looking for coffee quotes) sometimes distracts me and my coffee gets cold. That reminds why I'm sitting at my laptop and I get back to work.