Coffee

Coffee is bloody fantastic stuff isn't it. Better than most stuff anyway.
  My coffee drinking career started at an early age. So early in fact that I can't remember how long ago it was I was just that young... or maybe I was seven. What I do remember though is what my father told me after I asked him what he was drinking one morning, he said "It's coffee" quickly followed by "you won't like it" and then the most preposterous "you're too young"....

...oh dear.
 A simple "It's coffee." would have been the perfect response. I doubt I would have bothered him further about it and would have forever remained a juice drinker - but he didn't.
Telling me I won't like something was tantamount to saying "Only high level super-beings like this drink. Are you awesome enough to handle it?" adding "you're too young" was just silly and he might just as well have stuck a funnel down my throat and started pouring.

So sat there, quietly sipping, there was no way in hell I would ever admit to disliking the revolting drink that  my father had consequently given me. It was so bitter that I must have looked like I'd been raped by a lemon. Seeing my expression  my fathers face lit up with deranged glee in his eyes and remarked "I said you wouldn't like it" (though in my mind it went more along the lines of "Pah! you are but a mere child, now you see you are not ready for drinks this awesome?").
So I downed the lot.

As time passed my coffee swilling habits had grown to the stage to which most University Lecturers only attain after decades of practice and poor hygiene. My morning pint of coffee was black and had no less than 4 heaped teaspoons of instant with a one-to-one sugar ratio. I believe at this stage in my life I was probably better at drinking coffee than I was at breathing and if I concentrated hard enough I could willingly stop time.
It was then that my father introduced me to REAL COFFEE!
Real coffee was nothing short of a revelation. It was almost like I'd lived my whole life thinking I knew what an aeroplane was until one day somebody pointed out that what I thought was an aeroplane was actually a pigeon.
The difference is not a small one. The difference is so huge in fact that it's as if someone had tried to describe real coffee to the makers of gravy granules but didn't want to use anything so obvious as a cup of the stuff or actual words and had instead decided the best way to convey the taste of coffee was through the art of mime.... from several hundred metres away.
Years later and I still require a cup of coffee to wake me up in the mornings, although I seem less able to drink vast quantities of the stuff than I used to. More than three cups in a day seems to invoke some kind of short heart attack coupled with a mild aneurysm. I even gave the stuff up for a short while and instead of coffee I drank fruit smoothies but found that the only way fruit could wake me up properly in the morning was if I jammed a pineapple in my eye repeatedly.

For some reason I don't feel I can sign off on this post without telling you what is in my opinion the finest coffee on the planet. It's Guatemalan Maragogype, French Roast - Elephant bean. "What's an elephant got to do with it?", you ask. I'm not sure you really want to know... but I'll tell you anyway.
It's because the coffee beans are fed to the elephant along with a special diet of stuff and things (a kindly old woman in a shop actually told me once but I can't remember) so that when it comes out the other end it has been seasoned to the kind of perfection that only an elephants anus can truly achieve. It's then washed and sent to me.
You want to try some now don't you?