Free refill alert!

July 21 was a momentous day this year. I woke up, walked through to the kitchen, looked at the coffee machine and.....ignored it. Yes, that's right, I ignored the coffee machine, having made the decision that I would never again drink coffee for the rest of my life. The next morning I woke up with a killer headache. The coffee machine loomed with a larger presence in the room. But I gave it a withering glance and it shrank back to size. The next morning a slightly less killer headache. And by the time the headaches had worn off, I felt good! No more caffeine in my system! My focus and concentration started to come back, I no longer felt jittery when playing the violin, and life was looking good.

Well, life kept looking good....for just over three months. On the 28th of October I went with a friend to a local café and decided that I'd just have a small coffee. American drip coffee is not the greatest thing in the world, but boy did it go down well. And then, a miracle happened. I looked away for one second, then back again, and the coffee cup was full again, like the magic sack of potatoes that never empties. Huh? That's right - America, the evil land of tipping, is also the evil land of free refills. Of course, I couldn't leave that poor coffee unattended to. That would be cruel. It had lived its life well, and ended up in my cup, so I felt obliged to give it meaning and drink it. "A bomb is made to explode", says psychopath Dennis Hopper to Keanu Reeves in Speed. "That's its meaning, its purpose. Your life is empty because you spend it trying to stop the bomb from becoming." He might as well have been talking about a cup of coffee and my life over the past three months.

Well, one cup had turned into two. Which turned into three, four, five and six. By the time I finally left the café, I felt like that bomb in Speed. Wired to explode. Since then I have had coffee every day, usually one or two cups. Yesterday I didn't, though, which explains why this morning I again woke up with a killer headache. So let's try this again, shall we? Perhaps I can make it to four months this time.