This year I have mostly been injecting caffeine

Hello. My name is Claire and I am a fresly brewed coffeholic. I don't even know if that's a real word but it sounds damn good to me.

Over Christmas I decided that I'm (temporarily, at least) done with alcohol. In the dying months of 2006 I've suffered some mind-cripplingly god-awful rather-rip-out-my-own-intestines-and-hang-myself-with-them-than-go-through-that-again horrible hangovers. The kind of hangovers that see you hugging the cool porcelain into the wee hours, begging for someone to kill you just to end the misery. The kind of hangovers that make Rent Boy's heroin comedown look like a teddy bear's picnic.

"Well," I hear you say. "What do you expect after a three-day whiskey & wine bender? Tut, tut, blackie. For shame. For shame."

But that's the thing, you see. I haven't been going on three-day whiskey & wine benders. I haven't been drinking 'till the cows come home and I've forgotten my own name. These gut-wrenching hangovers haven't been the result of sitting in fields with hippies drinking White Lightening and poitín whilst looking for clouds shaped like sheep.

No, I'm nowhere near that cool.

I now get a three-day hangover after just a couple of glasses of wine. In fact, I'm convinced that the severity and length of my hangover is directly proportional to the number of glasses of wine I've had the night before.

1 glass of wine = mild headache and general feeling of crappiness for 1 day afterwards.
2 glasses of wine = dwarves drilling in my head and stomach churning for 2 days afterwards.
3 glasses of wine = orcs pounding on my head with a sledgehammer whilst I pray to God on the big white telephone for 3 days afterwards.
4 glasses of wine = Goodnight Vienna.

Ok, maybe I've exaggerated a bit, but you get the general picture.

I'm broken.

I don't know how it's happened, but I think I've broken something inside. And this fear of hangover is what's kept me relatively sober this Christmas. Sure, I've enjoyed a couple of glasses of vino and maybe a Bailey's or two with friends and family, but in the two weeks of holidays there are only two nights where my memory of getting to bed is a little fuzzy.

So what did I do with myself on those other nights out when I couldn't face alcohol?

I drank coffee.

Lots and lots of coffee.

As a result, I haven't slept properly in two weeks. I am seriously sleep deprived. But it's worth it because I have come to the conclusion that I LOVE COFFEE. I love it with all my squishy red blood-pumping apparatus. I love the smell of it. I love the taste of it. I love how it looks in my cup or in a glass. I love the different varieties. I love cappucinos and lattes and mochas and americanos (but not espressos - I'm not a savage). But mostly I love how coffee makes me feel. I love the rush. The caffeine high. The rare hour of clarity immediately after I've taken that first hit of the day. The abundance of ideas that suddenly come charging forward begging for my attention. The urge to write or paint or run or sing - anything to make use of this manic energy before it disappears and I'm left with the jitters.

After two weeks of drinking coffee almost exclusively, I'm hooked. And like any proper junkie, I need to get some proper gear to feed my habit. Whilst flicking through a catalogue (at twenty pages per second), I came across this and nearly creamed myself:

It's not particularly expensive and it's probably not the best one out there, but this is the machine of my dreams. It's got a ten-cup capacity, a fastbrew option that brews the coffee in eight minutes, it's got a six-espresso-cup capacity, it's got a milk frother thingie, and it's shiny and black and got chrome bits... Sorry, I need a moment.

*sigh*

I want it.

And I'm going to get it. If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to get that dream machine!

You see, I don't currently own any coffee making apparatus. Other than a kettle, a cup and a spoon, of course. Which means that I am reduced to drinking instant shite unless I can get myself to a café. And, from Monday to Friday, between the hours of about 8am and 7pm, I cannot get myself to a café because, you see, I work in the middle of nowehere:

I work somewhere behind those trees. See? Middle of nowhere. There are no cafés nearby. Certainly no Starbucks (I hate the corporate empire which is slowly but surely taking over the world - they now have Starbucks in Ireland for Christ's sake, the last defence has been broken - but, oh, how I love their coffee!). And so I am reduced to bringing instant coffee with me to work. And we hates it my preciousssss.

This is what I drink at work:

Crappucino.

"Now with delicious Suchard topping!"

What the hell is "Suchard"? It doesn't even look like chocolate, let alone taste like chocolate!

Still, beggars can't be choosers. So, when I get into work in the morning, I pour myself a nice crappucino and pretend it tastes like coffee:

But I long for a dream machine like the one above. I long for real coffee that's been percolated properly with water that's hot but not boiling. I long for steamed, frothy milk, not powdered, sickly-sweet muck. I long to be able to do this with my coffee:

How nice do those coffees look? Tasty! Pretty! Warm! All the things I like! I want those!

The new girl brought a cafetière into work whilst I was away over Christmas. I saw it on her desk this morning. I'm waiting for her to brew some of the good stuff so I can blag a cup. But I fear she may do it in secret for she knows how much I love real coffee and knows that I'll just drink all of hers and leave her with the nasty bitter grinds at the end and then she'll never get rid of me!!! Arrrgghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, I've officially got the jitters. And the paranoia. Time to go drink some water.