Sugar, coffee and other things that are bad for your health but good for the soul

I’ve long been a fan of Puccino’s, the little coffee franchises you sometimes find in train stations. Not only is their coffee good (if pricey – but no worse than anywhere else, I don’t think) but they have this unique humour thing going on thanks to (I believe) surreal cartoonist Stephen Appleby; certainly the jokes and images look a lot like his. Thus far I’ve only seen the spindly drawings and coffee-related quips on the Puccino’s signage and cups (e.g. a notice above the kiosk saying “INSTRUCTIONS: 1. Queue here. 2. Buy coffee. 3. Walk away with nervous smile” or a cup saying “Dispose of in bin, but sadly”) but the other day whilst indulging myself with the all-too infrequent treat of a cappuccino I found the trademark Puccino silliness all over the sugar packets to boot. The first one I picked up said on it, “Serving suggestion: Put in coffee and shut up.” There were plenty more to be had along these lines so I grabbed one of each – see pic of my nascent “collection”. Sadly the “shut up” one (which made me laugh the most) has since disappeared – I think someone at work might have blasphemously used it for actual sugaring purposes – but if I see another one I’ll be sure to get another “copy”.
Incidentally I say the cappuccino is an infrequent pleasure, not because I’m saintly and abstemious but because (a) coffee-shop coffee does, as I say, cost a small fortune, (b) although I love coffee I’m not a coffee nazi and make do 5 days out of 7 with instant (Douwe Egberts is the best, I find, although more often Nescafe is the best I can do), and (c) the caffeine content of real coffee-shop coffee has the tendency to put my eyes on stalks for about the next 9 hours. As Garfield once doggerel’d, “Coffee I love you, you make me glow / My nerves don’t like you, but what do they know?”

One thought on “Sugar, coffee and other things that are bad for your health but good for the soul

Comments are closed.