How to wean yourself off coffee in five easy steps
- Start a survey of high-street designer brews and present the results on your website. Stand back in astonishment at how much you drink and how much it costs you.
- Decide that Benjy's is the best value for money (read: the cheapest) and stick to it for your early morning and mid-day fixes. Get aquainted with the briskly efficient Latvian staff in the process.
- After one too many near-exploded Italian coffee-machines forgotten on the stove, clean up the splatter from the tiles in a three-feet radius, throw away the remaining beans and hide your addiction's paraphernalia in an out-of-reach place. Switch to the cheapest instant brand you can find, currently the garishly blue-and-white-stripe decorated Tesco Value: 31p (granules) or 29p (powder) for 100g.
- When Benjy's puts up the price from 75 to an outrageous 79 pence, stop going there, cold turkey. The timing is perfect, as it coincides with Superdrug round the corner doing two-for-ones on half-litre bottles of diet Pepsi for 89p. Drink four throughout your working day, every day. Tell yourself that the aim is to give up coffee, not caffeine and see if you buy it.
- Ditch the cola in favour of free water from the fountain at work.
That's it. You are free. You are confident. You smugly celebrate with a white americano from Pret. To your surprise, you are served by a former Latvian Benjy's employee who has moved up the coffee ladder. She winks at you and makes your coffee before you even ask. She knows how you like it. She'd give you the first cup for free if she could. You try and ignore the buzz the mother of all coffees is giving you and swear never to go there again.