Confessing to an addiction

• By Alison
• 26 February, 2008
• 3 Comments

I’ve struggled with addition for a long time. Well not to much struggled. I’ve embraced it pretty well for years. I accept that I live in a state of
acceptance, and I manage the addiction quite strictly. But sometimes you get a reminder about the intensity of things in a rather sureal way, like a cosmic
hand reaching down and slapping you silly. That’s what I got when I found myself kissing the envelope in which the replacement valve for my cappucino
machine arrived in.

Without my mukka, I had to survive on coca cola. Instant coffee is totally unacceptable, and even plunger turned out to fail to satisfy in a monumental way. It
failed while we were on holiday. I take the mukka everywhere – even in the van for afternoon jaunts. Fortunately CenterParcs had a coffee shop, although
unfortunately it was Starbucks. The queues were mathematically formulated – the number of people serving to the power of 4. And they have the audacity to call
their smallest cup measurement “tall” and give you a cup about three times the size of your average stomach which forces you to deposit the last half
in the nearest rubbish bin.

The actual failure was fairly monumental and gave me a line of coffee splatter across the middle of my t-shirt. Plus the wall beside the hob, and a bit of the
floor. And the sink. And the cereal boxes on the other side of the sink. It reminded me of the time I discovered what actually happens when you lift the egg
beaters out of the pancake mix while still turning the handle. But that’s a story for another time.

I managed to get my fix from different places until the end of the week. Mostly going back to an old friend – the coca cola can (never ever pepsi!). Just 2
cans would do the trick.

I think age has mellowed me somewhat. There was a time while I was at university when I lived on about 8 cans of coke a day. One night while mounting my
photography for marking and display i drank a 2 litre bottle of coke and then had to take no-doze tablets to keep myself awake, since my body was too used to
caffeine. I decided that this was an unacceptable addiction – so I gave up cold turkey. Wow. I ended up driving my car one and a half streets to the corner
shop, buying a can of coke and then sitting in the gutter slamming it immediately. That was fun. I didn’t do that this time!

Arriving home I immediately found someone who sold replacement valves and ordered it. Monday came the confirmation email, and Tuesday saw the arrival of the
package. Oh happy day. It’s not really dignified to watch a grown woman skip about cackling with glee, but that’s what happened. And it’s a lovely
cappucino.

Ahhhh. Caffeine. It runs through my veins.