The liturgy of the daily office

We all have our morning rituals, which can be carried out with the same degree of observation as any religious devotion. Mine is making coffee.

I am half-awake in my priestly blue robes: an ancient dressing gown and towel. The fruity, medium-roast beans are solemnly put in the grinder and when it starts a high-pitched whine I know the two heaped dessertspoons of granular powder are ready for the cafetière. I pour on freshly boiled water and, being a bloke, I time exactly five minutes.

Ping. Piston plunged, coffee poured into Spanish-style glasses with detachable handles. Cold milk is spumed up in a manual frother, and the faux Guinness moment is reached. Perfection or at least well beyond passable? We hope.

The first hit of caffeine through the aerated cow juice reaffirms that it is good to be alive, probably.

This is a personal ritual that has developed, been rearranged and rescored over almost 40 years, good times and bad. It means that many a coffee elsewhere is a disappointment; that all the paraphernalia have on occasion travelled thousands of miles; and that finding somebody else's coffee to be not only different but also as good or even better is a delight.

I was in Seville a couple of years ago on a rare reporting assignment. I know the city quite well, and I was appalled that it has succumbed to an outbreak of Starbucks. Seville is full of great tapas bars that can whip up a marvellous cafe con leche in no time at all. The Starbucks branches seemed full of gormless tourists with backpacks who may have travelled far but were not really capable of travelling anywhere away from the familiar. Globalisation is not a blessing if it replaces excellent local diversity with a universal clone.

Every morning with our ritual, we are reassured or maybe deluded that for coffee to exist, somebody or something in the Universe must like us and bless us.