Dream Thievery and Good Coffee

The Vernacular Curate is now back to normal service levels. Hold on to your hat, your hair and your extremities.

Many of you, like me, are barely alive until the fourth or fifth litre of coffee has landed mouth-side. To be honest, I can't even aspire to the vertical until after the third full mug. I would have an intravenous drip fitted, but it would mean re-working the cuffs on my cassock, and that just won't do. 

Despite my very youthful age (have I ever mentioned that I am rather young), I can still remember a world without the Golden-Arch Corporation. Yes, kids, I can still see a picture of a McDonald's free world where fast food was offered simply by Wimpy on beige plates. Life was good, simple, and sepia back then. Then Ronald McDonald exploded over the entire world and we now all eat too fast out of paper and polystyrene. But then something else happened, after that.

Almost by stealth, in the dark of a November night, every former Spar shop (or Londis if you are from that part of the world) turned into the nut-grinding empire of a highly trained and eminently skilled barista. Everywhere you turn, you will see a coffee-shop. Try going out of doors to buy a darning mushroom or a fish-knife these days, and you will surely fail. Need a sewing machine or a cravat? Pah. Not a chance, mate. For ye shall rejoice with coffee, my friend. In fact, so bad has this become, that I toddle back into a Macky-Dees just for a little nostalgia, a view of life in the halogen days of yore. 

But, dear readers, there is a price. This socio-caffeinated development has an insidious side, oh yes it does. You want aluminium-table java emporia? There is a price to pay. 

Last week, I noticed how much more I had been dreaming in my sleep (as distinct from during my awakedness, for they are different dreams). Every night, I had had nice fluffy dreams that I could remember in the morning. It was like being alive again, not just a blinded hitchhiker through the dark of night in my flabby body. Then I discovered the awful truth. The wife, none other than the fragrant Mrs Acular, had replaced our normal ground coffee with (and I can barely type it without falling into spasm) decaffeinated ground coffee. N'ere a drop of life-giver passed my lips for a whole stinking week, for I had been unwittingly detoxificated.

I can disclose, therefore, that full-fat full power coffee robs you of your dreams. You heard it here first.