In Berlin, near Checkpoint Charlie, where actors playing Russian border guards shivered in thin, ersatz Red Army uniforms, we fell into the nearest Starbucks. Maybe it was my damp bones, or because we'd just followed an exhibition of wretched life behind the Wall with a harrowing trip to Gestapo HQ, but I went mad and ordered a vanilla and caramel latte macchiato. Yay, to living in a free modern Europe! You wouldn't get six choices of sprinkle toppings in the old GDR. And the Nazis would certainly have made this impure co-mingling of coffee and corn-based syrups Verboten.

My drink was disgusting. A bland half-pint of milk with as much coffee flavour as if someone sipping an espresso had sneezed over my cup. A coffee for someone who hates coffee, but uses the bitter adult nectar as a cloak of sophistication for their babyish suckling on warm, creamy sweetness.

I should have walked another rainy block to any German coffee house, where a fragrant black brew is standard. And usually comes with one small, free, delicious biscuit, thus negating interest in a mushroom cloud of triple-choc muffin. What a pity that when Britain traded in our centuries-old tea habit we bypassed the Continent for the mighty American beverage industry. We might not now be a nation with chafing thighs.

Is it a coincidence that obesity rates have soared in tandem with the coffee chains? There are now 3,000 branded cafés in Britain, 600 of them Starbucks, which every fortnight opens a new venue in which you can appreciate the music of Norah Jones. In London, says its corporate website, you are never more than five minutes from a Starbucks. Although the same is said about a rat.

What a glorious racket is a coffee chain! They flog an addictive drug at a ludicrous mark-up and have hiked their prices by 40 per cent in a decade. Yet they seem so benign and progressive, with their muted lighting, soft furnishings, invitation to linger, draft a novella, trade slightly risqué badinage, like characters in Friends. The franchises crop up in bookshops: bohemia, Left Bank. The HQ is in Seattle: grunge, garage, Nirvana. Decor is quirky, dark, woody, after-hours. It is easy to forget that every branch is utterly the same.

And while McDonald's has received much kicking for its role in ballooning our bellies, the coffee chains have thus far avoided blame. Yet Which? this week reports that a Starbucks large white chocolate mocha with whipped cream is 628 calories. But, duh, it's virtually a dessert! What concerns me is the medium latte at 273 calories. Britain's preferred brew was once the cappuccino (one third milk) but we've shifted to the latte (two thirds). Indeed, whenever I watch poo-doctor Gillian McKeith spread out some blushing butterball's weekly food intake, among the pies and pizzas is always a phalanx of latte cups. Four a day is common.

It is, after all, just a drink. Yeah, I'll have another if you will. And the latte is often served in a glass, which is a bit exotic. I remember when I first heard one ordered. Ooh, they're in the know, I thought, my own cappuccino rendered provincial and gauche. No one points out that a latte was not created as an all-day guzzle; that in Italy it is a breakfast-only drink.

Bill Bryson, upon arriving in pre-coffee-house Britain, wrote how he was charmed by our enjoyment of treats that he, as an American, regarded as touchingly meagre. Our deep sigh after our first sip of cuppa, a plain scone or a toasted teacake, which is no more than a bap with big ideas.

Now look at us, Bill! We stand before the bewildering Starbucks blackboard and ask, unblushing, for a “venti frappuccino with whip”. It's more exposing to order a plain coffee. Starbucks' success is built on individuality: “Customise your coffee” instructs a large notice. So what kind of boring person doesn't want maple syrup or extra froth? Don't you have many facets to your personality? What, you're just a regular guy? Besides when you're paying around £3 a drink - Starbucks is vastly dearer than your local small coffee shop - you deserve all the swirls and sprinkles. And try ordering a cup of tea. Or rather a Tazo Chai Latte (large: £3.05, 322 calories), which is - bleugh - one big milky cuppa. Ordinary tea is at the very end of the menu since even Starbucks can't justify a mark-up beyond £1.55 on hot water and a teabag.

And Which? discovered that Starbucks coffee is terrible. An

expert taster rated their Americano “poor”, their cappuccino only “satisfactory” since, while Costa and Caffè Nero stick in two shots as standard, Starbucks offers only a single. But then of course it's foul a) because American coffee is the thinnest, meanest cup of Joe on the planet and b) because that's the way we like it.

Malcolm Gladwell in Blink discusses market research by coffee manufacturers. Customers all say they like a “rich, dark roast” when three quarters really hate coffee that way. They like it weak and milky, but don't like to admit it. Starbucks has grown rich and we've grown fat, allowing us to demand a vanilla and caramel latte macchiato, while in our heads we're thinking instant Mellow Birds.

Is your Easter as messed up as mine? Did I miss the letter home to parents saying that the Government has abolished Easter if it falls inconveniently early, like this year on March 23. It's part of the Government's tidying up of the school year, so half terms are nice, neat equal lengths. My son at a state primary gets Good Friday to Easter Monday off, then returns to school to toil for another fortnight, before his two-week secular “spring break”, with all its associations of frat boys going mental in Atlantic City.

Meanwhile, private schools, such as my elder lad's, are sticking to the crazy old-fashioned idea of Easter holidays during Easter. This means my sons are off for more than four weeks in total, but their vacations overlap for only four days! Working parents - particularly teachers at different schools to their kids - are banging heads on kitchen calendars in despair.

I don't know who to blame: the Government for fixing something that wasn't broken and thus encouraging mass truancy, the private schools for cussedly ignoring change or the Church for keeping this arcane way of calculating

Easter: first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox indeed.

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