I have succumbed. Given in. Surrendered. My wife wanted a shiny piece of metal
and plastic that buzzed and shook until she was in ecstasy. And I let her
have it. Indeed, I’ve begun to use it slyly on the side myself.
After all, the Nespresso machine was made for sharing.
Everywhere we went over Christmas, everywhere we’ve been since the new year,
there has been the gurgle and plop of the Nespresso. Like the iPod a couple
of years ago, it’s a gadget that has gone from recher-ché stylishness to
ubiquity in just a few months. For those of you yet to acquire this little
slice of Torinese sophistication (cheaper than a Ferrari, but much more
reliable – indeed much more reliable than anything else Italian) I can only
say, get down to John Lewis before it’s too late.
Most of us, I know, will have found the whole business of making coffee at
home dispiriting over the years. The percolator and the cafetière are all
very well, but the liquid that they produce has none of the intensity of a
proper, café-pressurised, espresso. Using cafetière coffee to make a
cappuccino is like making a martini with Volvic mineral water – it looks OK
from a distance, but the taste is as bland as Geoff Hoon’s haircut and the
whole thing has as much bite as a day-old lamb.
Trying to make a proper espresso at home has been almost impossible for all
but the wealthiest, and ponciest, of us. Given how expensive and fiddly
Gaggia espresso-makers are, the only people likely to have them are those
who are so rich that they need never work again, not least because they’ll
need all their time to clean and maintain this steam-driven monster. Now,
however, the Nespresso machine brings espresso-quality, indeed ristretto-strength,
coffee within the reach of millions, with minimal inconvenience. All you
need to do is plop a little capsule into the machine – like slotting a
cartridge into a shotgun, or a battery into a torch – then press and wait,
for about ten seconds. And then you have a near-perfect draught of the
darkest pleasure.
For my wife, the Nespresso brings not only a welcome whiff of her Italian
childhood into our house, but it also provides regular treats throughout the
day which, unlike most of the treats that normally sustain me, will fit in
with our new, sugar-free, January lifestyle.
However, while both of us are now deeply attached to the thing, it is not
nostalgia for my childhood that espressos produce, but rather a curious
sense of being part of a revolution. When I was a child “proper” coffee was
still faintly exotic, the sort of thing that was available only in hotels
after Sunday lunch, when a funny plastic hat would be put on a teacup and
the Rombouts dripped into the china in much the same way that the rain
dimpled the muddy earth outside. Every other meal either ended or was
accompanied by tea. A curious liquid called Camp, apparently made from
chicory, or a powder almost indistinguishable from Bisto was sometimes used
to generate cups of something warming at church coffee mornings, but the
relationship between that drink and anything that you would sell as a coffee
today was as loose as the relationship between a peat fire and a plutonium
rod.
I now drink coffee at a rate that probably has me get through as much of the
stuff in seven days as my parents did throughout the whole of the Seventies.
It scarcely takes me a week to fill up my Caffè Nero loyalty card – and
that’s only my prebreakfast intake. I don’t know what the long-term effects
on me of this regimen might be.
Perhaps the fact I’m writing this at 3am on Monday might hold a clue.
I do, however, have a theory about the effect on the life of the nation of a
massive transfusion of Dr Starbucks’s patent pick-me-up: I think that it’s
made us a little bit tetchier. Consider the queues in any one of the obvious
coffee outlets – the foot-stamping, the texting or mobile-phone calling even
as the order is being made, and the impatience if the cup isn’t forthcoming molto
presto. Consider the epidemic of cutting-up, tailgating, light-jumping
and overtaking on the inside that characterise driving in London. Or the way
in which M&S’s Simply Food stores have accelerated their check-out
system, or the fact that no story in Metro or London Lite requires
more than ten seconds to absorb, or how we now discuss 90-second spoofs on
YouTube (such as the downfall of Sheffield United) with the same degree of
passion that we used to devote to proper hours of made-for-TV drama. All of
London appears to be on a permanent caffeine rush. And now the Nespresso
means that you’re never more than ten seconds away from your next hit.
As with so many revolutions, the great caffeinisation of modern Britain is
probably irreversible. We now automatically associate a cup with a treat or
break, the coffee house having sold itself as a haven or retreat, but this
is the break from routine that ends up driving us farther away from true
relaxation. The coffee shop is only a haven from the hurly-burly in the way
that a First World War trench was a shelter from slaughter – it provided a
temporary respite from attrition, but was really at the heart of the whole
problem. The dilemma for me is that I now just love the intense, deeply
bitter, jolt of dark, strong Italian coffee more than any other taste (apart
from, perhaps, martinis). And now it’s there, whenever I want it. I am
destined, therefore, to almost permanent grouchiness from now on. It’s
probably just as well, however, that I’m an opposition politician. Because,
apart from being a directory inquiries operator, there are few other jobs in
which tetchiness has become, over the years, such a valuable qualification.
How a tear united the PC brigade
A year ago I argued that Barack Obama was an Apple Mac kind of guy (funky,
left-field, smart) and Hillary a PC (mechanical, dour, lacking creative
soul). Like most observers last week, I thought that Mac-style politics
(cool, informal, user-friendly, accessible) was set to triumph over the
duller PC approach of sticking rigidly to the programme. But Hillary’s
comeback forces us to reexamine the division. And it may be reassuring for
those of us (as I said at the time) who are pure PC.
Most of us are PCs. We may have special talents, but we’ll never be
exceptional. PCs get on with working hard and earning respect for their
reliability. And that is part of Hillary’s appeal. Even though her campaign
for the presidency has sometimes suffered from her aides assuming that the
Oval Office was Clinton territory by right, she projects the personality of
someone who knows what it’s like to be taken for granted and so takes
nothing for granted herself. The sense that she’s a
get-it-done-and-damn-the-glory type appeals to many. So her teary moment
struck a chord with those unsung figures who do the work and never become
Prom Queen, but occasionally find the hoopla surrounding the matinee idols a
touch wearing. For those of us who understand why Dolly Parton’s Jolene
has such resonance, the tears were a turning point.
Scottish Dolly
Talking of Jolene reminds me that growing up in Scotland in the 1970s
meant that you were as immersed in country music as anyone raised in
Nashville . We had our own stars, such as Sydney Devine (Broken
Engagement, Long Black Limousine and Nobody’s Child).
And I’ve never lost my affection for heart-wrenching ballads. But did Sydney
get the recognition he deserved? Was one of his records ever chosen for Desert
Island Discs? Does his name mean anything to anyone under 40? If Sydney
fans can let me know what heights he may have scaled, I’d be delighted.
Michael Gove is the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath.
