The initial plan was to do all 8 cafes on the disloyalty card, but as The Whitecross Coffee Cart isn’t there on Saturdays, lets start the loop at Prufrock Coffee.

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We’ll cut the west London cafes off and you can visit them at your leisure to fill up the card.

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So in true boys own style, the adventure starts at Prufrock - 140 Shoreditch High st (that’s A on the map) at 10:30 this Saturday (the 23^rd)

I’m in two minds as to transport, bikes or feet, so bring your bike, and if people want to walk you can push it, but if people want to ride then you’ll have to get a backie!

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my current coffee making setup

This is mostly for Andrew’s benefit, but I thought I’d use it as a chance to show off a bit.
Out of shot is the £5 Ikea thermometer/timer for measuring water temperature.

I probably should start charting the grind setting, water temperature volume of water etc. but I worry about it turning into full blown OCD (Aspergers is looming close enough).

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I’ve got a mobile internet dongle, so I can indulge my outrageous dependency on the internet from wherever I am, I carry at least one of my laptops almost everywhere I go, and I did have a fantastic todo list linked to my blackberry, (but alas no more, when I left Australia I surrendered my badge and gun) – so I’m getting there.

All this is no guard against my chronic laziness though. Which is why we find ourselves, dear reader, in the courtyard of the Parisiene cafe (predictive wants to write parasite – curiously appropriate) in Bath. Today is my friend NeAl is getting married to Sarah, and I’m wrapping their present in a cafe after nipping into a smiths and buying wrapping paper with monsters on it.

I bought a coffee, much to the detriment of my new year’s resolution never to buy coffee I suspect will be bad. I queued up, and a gentlemen in his 40s was driving a La Spaziale S3 , my expectations were temporarily buoyed up, and I thought "this man clearly owns this place, and he cares enough to buy a really great machine, he cares enough to drive it himself, and he cares enough to actually be on the floor of his own place on a Saturday, when judging by the number of customers, he could be sunning himself in Spain".

But alas, he wasn’t the caring sort, he made a cappuccino in a matter of seconds with no love, or even care, dolloped a mini Eager Of dry froth onto the top of some burnt milk (with a thermometer sticking out of it, so any claim of ignorance falls on deaf ears, only complacency can explain this) and then my desperate cry of "no chocolate" was to no avail, and the inevitable slick of Cadburies finest was summoned to pollute my Eiger.

And, my dearest reader, do you know who I blame? Me – it is entirely my fault. by not telling this poor gentlemen that his barista skills are sorely wanting I have done him a great disservice, I have deprived him of one of the most valuable learning tools out there – feedback, and for this I am more complicit in the gross injustice dealt to the British coffee drinker than an innocent.

Let’s hope that this note finds its way back to its protagonist, and my apology is accepted.