It's Saturday morning and it would be raining in Scotland. Just Having a mug of coffee with my grand father who is up visiting from Gloucester with my parents. We have been discussing various strong cups of the "black engine" that we have encountered in our lives. Not, of course, cups of mildly brown water from your average British tea room, nor indeed the over priced life-style enhancing, environmentally sound because it's served in a recycled paper cup rubbish you get from the rash of evil doing branded chains on your local high street. No we were talking about real coffee, the kind of stuff that can change your life in a sip, the sort of coffee that, if left alone for even the shortest moment, would happily evolve into something with a fist and smack you in the face because it knows you've had a cup of tea! Granddad is better travelled than I, largely due to his time spent in the Army, and has regaled me stories of espresso pouring from 1800's brass bullets in Austria just after the war, and the smells of beans roasting in the foothills of Jamaican mountains. My tales of festivals in belgium pale to insignificance, although both of us agree that Italy is the place to go for an espresso. My first brush with Italy and her coffee shops came not so long ago in a not to shabby looking cafe in ventimiglia. Where in the UK upon asking for a cup of coffee one would expect to receive a large mug of mud, in Italy however, a small cup of the strongest most intensely flavored blackness will make it's way to your table bringing along with it a glass of water and a biscuit, what a difference..... why can't the rest of the world create, transport and deliver a humble cup of coffee with such passion?
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