guilty pleasure (mono monday challenge)

I like coffee.  There I’ve said it.

I’ve never been a caffeine junkie - always kept to just a couple of cups a day - and never after lunch.

I fell in love with coffee (black of course) in the summer of 1967 when a group of friends drove an old van down through France to the Spanish coast for a camping holiday.  We’d driven through the night and emerged into the early morning sunlight, down a dusty, tree-lined road in to a small French Town.  (Many years later, travelling along the same road, I recognised the town as Cahors).

It was about half-past six and we stopped at a small cafe where the owner was setting out tables at the side of the road.  He bought us a basket of freshly made croissants and bread and steaming black coffee - in bowls.

It blew my head off, but I’d been reading a lot of Hemingway at the time and ‘real’ men took their coffee black and strong.  So I persevered and by the time the holiday was over, milk and sugar were history.

As we were leaving I said, in school-boy French - “tres bonne” - to which the owner replied “James Bond”.