Yes, I know. Sorry for springing it on you like that; just take a deep breath and try to recover. But it's true: I no longer drink coffee.

I have no wish to present you with a long spiel about the health dangers of habitual coffee intake — I don't know whether there are any and don't particularly care. My choice is not one of health nor one of morality, vegan-style, rather one of deliberate self-abnegation.

Being a software developer I was living the cliché: drinking my long blacks happily and with merry freedom. Nothing better than sitting in a café reading a recent Wired, perhaps, with a slice of cake and a tauntingly bitter espresso with strong body and impressive crema. Mmmm.

Our development team were working on a particular project a couple of years ago and the company rented a room for us several suburbs away from the rest of the office which was delicious and very productive — just the three of us in this one tiny room with three laptops, a test server, a big sheet of butchers paper on the wall with lists of tasks and the woman running a freight company on the phone in the room next door (“Or moy gord. Did he really? Or moy gord” every minute and a half. Christ, she drove us nuts). But there was nothing to do when we wanted a break except to make ourselves more coffee and or moy gord were we floating on the ceiling by mid-afternoon every day. I would go home and suffer dizzy spells and strange heart palpitations. I would wake up in the morning awash in sweat and with shaking hands: it was actually kind of groovy.

And in the midst of this my girlfriend, a lass I was particularly fond of, dropped my sorry ass leaving me a crushed, self-hating, shell of a lad. I lived the cliché again: standing at cliff-edges staring mournfully out to sea with biting offshore winds pulling at my hair as the orchestral soundtrack swelled and the camera swooped in a helicopter around me etc.

I guess that in order to regain the sense that I had some sort of control over myself I decided to give something up of my own choice. There was, of course, no way I was giving up the smack so given our recent experiments in coffee insanity I just stopped drinking it — cold turkey — and have been enjoying my Earl Greys ever since.

Now, as much as I enjoy rambling endlessly and in dull detail about my own history there was a point to this: there are a couple of hints in making a decent cup of tea which I would like to share:

• The water must be boiling when it hits the tea leaves. Not merely having recently boiled but actually boiling. That's the secret.
• Get everything hot beforehand and keep it hot. Warm the pot with a splash of boiling water before you put the tea in; warm the cup too; tea cosies… the whole production. So yes, heat: it's all about the heat
• The whole cuppa tea things works better when your conversation is about show tunes. I don't try to explain it; it's just true.
• Full cream milk. I may have ranted about low fat milk here before. I predict fat is making a comeback — fat is the new black.
• A good cup of tea is a little harder to make with teabags but certainly not impossible: just remember to let the teabag steep before you add the milk. The fat (see above) will coat the bag which obstructs the infusion.

¶ 9:45 am