Just a short note for those looking for Too Much Coffee. There is a slight issue with the TMC server this morning which is being addressed. Normal service will be resumed shortly, meanwhile please keep an eye here for any updates.

Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Update:  It is all sorted out now. The site is back up and running. Once again, apologies for the temporary outage.

At the risk of the title sounding like a Slade classic of yesteryear, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

It looks as though 2009 will be a tough year for many with the current economical crisis and the disappearance of much loved high street giants like Woolies and MFI. Let’s hope things improve as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, best wishes for a healthy, peaceful and prosperous new year.

It takes a lot to make me laugh aloud at a television programme, and a great deal to make that more than a little chuckle. The I. T. Crowd, now a few series old and demonstrating it’s maturity as a ‘fine wine’ of a comedy has brought me to tears more than once.

The depiction of a computer department ‘dungeon’ and those who inhabit it is perfect, and the subtle social references can easily be lost.  Hey, this is all sounding far too serious!

If you haven’t seen it, I would suggest you give it a go – and a couple of episodes for you to get into its groove. If you have ever worked in or with an I. T. department, you’ll probably ‘get it’ immediately.

Damn my sex pants ………..

The all too small speciality coffee world that many of us inhabit was rocked yesterday with the shock news that fellow enthusiast Danny McNulty had passed in the early hours of the morning.

It is always a surprise when someone dies suddenly, but even more so when they are apparently healthy, quite young – Danny was forty-nine – and a larger than life character. It seems that Danny had not been feeling too well and had been to hospital for tests. From accounts on alt.coffee, he went downhill quite quickly. That is all I know. It certainly made me think about how precious yet frail life is and how important it is to make the most of every sweet moment.

I came across Danny’s fabulously eclectic and informative website (www.danny.mcnulty.btinternet.co.uk/about.html) very early on in my coffee journey, long before finding TMC and other places that I now frequent. His espresso area was full of useful information about pulling shots, grinding correctly and all sorts about equipment. I have been pointing newcomers to coffee towards Danny’s pages ever since as his style of sharing information made so many hirtherto befuddling things very clear to me when I was at that stage of my development.

Danny’s Aladdin’s cave of a site also yielded the extemely entertaining story of his exploits in starting up a ‘commercial’ mobile coffee trailer near his Portsmouth home, which at first appeared to be as much for fun as anything, but subsequently became a very successful venture. That was Danny, up to all sorts and always having an adventure. He certainly seemed to live life to the full.

Like many online coffee folk, I never met Danny personally, but I did email him to say thank you for the information on his site and a very pleasent conversation ensued. He was clearly a very nice and very patient man, whom many felt as if they knew like a friend through his online persona. Danny was a member of TMC and an infrequent poster, though when he did pop-in, everyone seemed to know him.

For a while, Danny was the UK distributor of Monsooned Malabar. A few of my TMC compartiots bought from him now and then, all spoke highly.

In a small way, Danny was the ‘Alistair Cooke’ of the UK coffee world, regularly penning extremely funny pieces regaling readers of alt.coffee with his adventures in the coffee trailer, entitled “Sitting in a Field”. A search on alt.coffee will yield years worth of these classic little pieces that remind me very much of ‘Letter from America’. If you have not read them, they are well worth seeking out. Danny’s charm and wit shine through readily, as does his obvious consideration for his fellow beings. These are his lasting legacy to this, our little coffee world, which is today poorer for Danny’s loss.

God bless you Danny, rest peacefully. You will be missed by so many different people in lots of different ways. Thank you from those of us to whom you gave guidance either directly or through your website.

Our thoughts are with Danny’s loved ones.

It has been a while since I last posted. Quite a long time in fact. It was not deliberate, but just happened for a number of reasons, none of which are particularly note worthy or relevant to what is ostensibly a coffee blog. Needless to say, I missed it and am pleased to be back.

Having just said coffee is the main subject around here, today’s topic is football. I guess, on that note, most of the coffee people, bar one notable roaster, have just surfed away to something more relevant to them and anyone left is either a football fan or simply can’t be bothered at the moment to look for something else to read.

It’s that time again, the start of a new football season with all of the usual excitement. Everyone has hopes and dreams. I remember the summer of 1976, an August Saturday morning, not unlike today, but with less rain. It was my first real season of following football properly. Football Focus had a preview of

the season and as Grandstand began Frank Bough stood in front of the old green BBC football results and tables charts. They were still manually operated in those days, clever graphics were years away. I remember as the show opened, Frank said that it was the first day of an exciting new season and at a quarter to five, the boards would spring frantically to life with details the day’s events. Earlier that morning, I had bought a new football magazine called ‘Roy of the Rovers’. It was fantastic and for the next few years, without fail, I would run down the hill to the newsagents every Saturday morning to claim my copy from the ‘collections’ pile. It could have been delivered with the morning papers, but that would have simply spoilt my excited fun. I wanted to feel that first Saturday morning every week.

The excitement is still the same for most football fans as it ever was, but things are different these days. For starters, the Premier League and Football League often seem to kick-off on different Saturdays. Oddly though, today’s Football League season opening seems more like the old days to me than next

Jumpers for goalposts?

week probably will when the ‘big boys’ including my team begin their season. For me, the Football League Championship, not the Premier League, more closely resembles the old First Division. I think it is because the lower tier teams still have a large number of British players. I love the Premier League, it is surely the greatest league on earth these days and the quality is breath-taking. It’s just that each year the start of the Football League evokes strong memories of my youth. So, when Championship tactics appear a little naïve by comparison, I just remind myself they play a brand of football that many of us were brought up on, and then I rejoice at the whole stunning other level of skill that those in the Premier League are capable of producing. I love it all.

Football has changed immeasurable off the field as well. There wasn’t a lot of money about in 1976. Compared to the rest of us, footballers were well paid, but they were not getting ‘pop-star money’ and the average fan could relate to them. My point though is not about the pay packets of footballers but the amount of cash in the boardrooms. Back then, clubs were not really expected to make money by their shareholders, avoiding a loss was a good year. They were typically run by custodians who came from successful business careers. Local men made good with a desire to help their football club do well. Football was about sport, winning matches, not making money. Clubs were not an investment opportunity for money men, they were about community togetherness and entertainment. In those days, the club was an amalgam of the people in the boardroom who ran it with the sole aim of success on the field, the manager and players who went out and played each week with the sole aim of success on the field, and the fans who stood on the terraces each week to support the team with the sole aim of success on the field. It was simple; that was the football club. In the old days, the fans were the heart and the boardroom knew that. There were often hundreds or thousands of small shareholders, ensuring that the ‘ownership’ was never going to play a significant part in vetoing ‘football decisions’.

I find it difficult these days to work out what many clubs actually consist of now with leveraged buy-outs by investors looking for a quick profit and billionaires seeking a play thing. Where is the heart of the club? Where is someone at the top who actually cares about winning for winning’s sake rather than potential profit alone?

I think all that is truly left of those innocent days are the fans. They adore their clubs for the sheer love of it, without ulterior motive or thought of personal gain. It is a pure love. The spirit of clubs seems these days only to reside within the fans themselves and perhaps a few committed local born players, or those lucky enough to find themselves playing for their boyhood favourite teams. A disparate group is likely to erode the identity of any entity and foreign born players cannot be expected to truly understand the history of clubs from another land. Huge sums of money and a lack of historical understanding can easily change the motive for players wanting to succeed within a club and what they perceive ultimately amounts to success. Is it winning trophies or attaining the next big contract? In some cases, it makes me wonder. Today, there is an ever blurred line between the loyal player with a genuine love of the club and the mercenary with a taste for glory, be that personal or collective.

I recently caught a couple of episodes of a low budget reality show called “The Amazing Adventures of a Nobody: USA”. It’s a well put together half hour program about someone trying to travel across the States on five Dollars a day. The presenter and producer, Leon Logothetis, is a hugely entertaining and very likable man, who despite finding himself in a terrible predicament with nowhere to stay during the making of one particular episode, insisted that he got his priorities right and found a bar showing the live Liverpool v Chelsea game. His company is called ‘Shankly Productions’. I think that says it all.

YNWA 96

I don’t know the details of or pretend to understand the complexivity of the issues in the recent cricket test between Australia and India. The alleged incident itself is not what leaves me feeling uneasy, but the way those involved in the aftermath have behaved, and in particular the position of the ICC.

Following the shambles some time ago involving Pakistan and Darryl Hare, we seem to be witnessing a second occurrence of the ICC capitulating in the face of pressure. It may or may not be that India are right in their position, but it bothers me that cricketing nations appear to be willing these days to threaten a withdrawl or boycott rather than to appeal any sanction through the correct channels.

Now whether this is beacuse the ICC determinations have been perceived to be so incompetent that those affected feel there is no option other than to resort to mutiny or simply that the ICC is known to have a soft underbelly is not clear to me. I do think, however, that the ICC needs to address the issue and might do well to begin by asking itself whether it is making enormous errors in judgement or has simply lost all authority over the game of gentlemen. Sad times.

A couple of people have asked after the grumpy old man in me over Christmas, well he is back.

I turned over the channel to Setanta Sports an hour or so ago and it had gone. Not literally, but I was being invited by the on-screen message to take out a subscription. All well and good, but I already have one.

After calling Setanta and selecting the ‘existing customer’ option complete with its five minute minumum wait, I redialled selecting the almost instantly answered ‘new customer’ option.

I explained our plight to ‘Kirsty’ on the other end of the line and we went through the usual ’security’ questions before she left me holding on the premium rate number whilst she went to find out why the service had disappeared.

It turned out that Setanta’s ’system’ was at fault and we would be switched back on within the hour. Fine then, no real harm done. Then Kirsty announced that they would “waive the reconnection charge on this occasion”. I begged her pardon and she said “we won’t be charging the reconnection”! How absurd, I observed, that they would even think of such a charge when their mistake had inconvenienced us. It seems that they cannot simply switch us back on as it is assumed their system is infallible so any reconnection would be as a result of customer intervention.

Kirsty explained that our usual billing date of the 11th of the month would from now on be the 3rd as a result of the reset. I checked the payment details on record with her and then asked if they would therefore be taking a pro-rata payment for this month seeing as the next eight days were already in credit from the last payment. On no, it seems that the system is unable to do that and we were to be billed the full monthly fee again, thus paying twice for the next eight days. Casually, Kirsty explained that is was only a few days and that’s just what the system does.

My response shall be condensed into a few words for the sake of brevity in this blog. ‘Breach of Contract’ and ‘Obtaining Funds by Deception’. Kirsty was asked to try again.

Eventually she returned saying that we would not be charged for the period from today until 3rd February, thus giving us three free weeks for the inconvenience. She was quizzed about the billing procedure and came up with a plausible explanation as to how it might go to plan, however, as ever I shall not hold my breath and instead fully expect to be billed again on 11th January then again on 3rd February, thus just moving the double billing period to next month.

Yet another hassle free, automated billing system that causes customers more trouble than it is worth. Full marks to Setanta for the free weeks but unless I had complained so fervently, the nonsense about recharging a further full month would have left us out of pocket. How can firms allow operators to spout such absurd – and illegal – rubbish, and how many old and/or vulnerable customers just go along with it? I shall be spending the next two months, at least, checking that they don’t over-charge us. Another waste of my time because big firms NEVER get it right.

Gosh, Christmas seemed to fly by with all the weeks of preparations disapperaing in what seemed to be ten minutes flat, with me failing miserably to blog at all over the festive period.

Despite the absence of any posts, I was laid in bed in the early hours of the morning the other day having one of those really strange thought processes that can only appear in the dead of the night.

It occured to me that we are changing the way we pronounce the year in this country as a result of the last millennium. Historically we have announced the date in hundreds rather than thousands which is the norm in many other nations. For instance, 1910 was “nineteen-ten” to us and typically “one thousand, nine hundred and ten” to, let’s say, the Spanish. Previously we had “nineteen oh-eight” whilst our continental friends more often used “one thousand, nine hundred and eight”, and so on.

Then suddenly as the last millennium approached, people in the UK began talking about “the year two thousand”, or just “two thousand”. It had to be so, because saying “twenty-hundred” just sounded wrong.

Now, I expected once we moved away from the year of 2000 itself that people would revert to saying, for example, “twenty-oh seven”. Some did, but most stuck to “two thousand and seven”. Why not I say, it does after all come to the tongue more easily.

So then, the next big date would be 2010, when it would surely be easier and more historically familiar for us to say “twenty-ten” rather than “two thousand and ten”? Well, as it gets nearer, I have heard quite a few people referring to 2010 and as yet not one has reverted to the older, more familiar format. Everyone that I have heard) seems to be saying “two thousand and ten”.

It remains to be seen whether our verbal reference to the date format has been changed forever by the millennium. In the mean time, my brain goes on in its never ending search for weird things to think about when I’m trying to get to sleep at night!

Remember that totally excited feeling everyone had a Christmas as a small child. You know, the one that showly builds up for about a week prior to the big day, beginning with that warm tingly feeling inside and ending up on Christmas Eve with so much excitement that you almost miss out on the night before Christmas fun because you cannot wait for the next morning. Just before falling asleep you really did hear Santa’s sleigh bells, didn’t you?

Like many, I suspect, the excitement overflowed in our house at about 3am on Christmas morning after no more than a couple of hours sleep, when I used to wake up and see that Father Christmas had been and the frenzy began. Well almost. I actually used to wake my Mum to ask if I could open my presents! The look of utter exhausted confusion on her face as she peered through half open bloodshot eyes year after year will be etched on my mind forever. She used to let me open one or two items and then it was back to bed until the far more sociable hour of 5am, or six if she was lucky ….. then it all started again!

Well that is the way I feel this week, and have done so for the past few years the week before Christmas since my coffee journey began, because just like my Mum making sure that Father Christmas visited all those years ago, Santa Steve at Has Bean now does so for me all over again. I shall explain more shortly.

Back in the old days, I would choose my main Christmas present, once it was a digital watch, I remember a Pong game and my first proper bike. It was always in or next to my stocking along with lots of other wonderful gifts. Many of them were fantastic little gadgets that would catch the imagination of any small boy. They were not the sophisticated electronic gadgets of today, but fun little things like pencil shapeners and money boxes than grabbed the coin if you placed it on a mechanical spring loaded switch, origami kits and moulds in the shape of cartoon characters that were filled with a plaster type substance and painted. It was often those little gifts that were still being investigated and filling my imagination late into the evening of Christmas day as we settled down with my Grandparents to watch Morcambe & Wise or the Two Ronnies. Those evenings constitute some of the most wonderful magical memories of my life.

The grown-ups had their presents on the tree in the afternoon, and enevitably, there were more presents there for me, which sometimes made Christmas lunch as big a blur of anticipation to me as Christmas Eve had been the night before! The presents I received from the tree were the medium sized ones somewhere in-between the single main present and stocking fillers that had been in my sack early in the morning, perhaps an early football video game or some Subbuteo teams, a radio/casette, records or tapes. There would always be something quite large to finish off, which one year was a cycle with gears to replace the smaller one I had received some years earlier. I nearly popped with excitement that day.

Back to today. Although the afternoon presents are far more sparse and the Christmas message far more important, time spent with loved ones is cherished here and now rather than its true value becoming apparent many years later, and my Grandparents are gone and much missed, that incredibly excited Christmas morning feeling has returned. For this week, I am mulling over the choice of Christmas coffees.

At this point, I have probably lost all readers other than my coffee chums. Rather like the Christmas mornings of childhood, when you had to believe in Father Christmas for the excitement to work, this will be lost on you unless you have experienced truely world class coffee and felt that same tingly feeling of excitement that accompanies it.

Not for us home roasted coffee at Christmas, we savour those all year round, though we will have a bag of our all-time favourite La Manuela on hand. Instead, we shall be spending the next couple of days perusing the choice of more exotic and unusual offerings at Has Bean before ordering a mixture of the slightly more expensive and our old favourites. A bag of the recently enjoyed Perfetio is a must. I will enjoy the rather unusual and very tasty cappuccini produced with this year’s Gethumbwini Peaberry, other possibilities are El Injerto, Herbazu and the as yet untried (by us) Limoncillo. We may order a bag of the wonderful and often underrated Cacheoira. Smith’s Farms Kona will be in there somewhere. A box of Suki Belfast Tea is a certainty. The choices are infinate and that is part of the fun. Between now and Tuesday we will have lots of enjoyment and shall make our decision.

There will be great excitement when the coffees (and tea!) arrive later in the week. We all know that unbeatable buzz of roasted coffee arriving in the morning post. But that will not be the end of it, for although we will open and use some of the coffees by next weekend as people call to say Happy Christmas, one or two – the special ones – will not be opened until Christmas Day, and they will be met with the same child-like excitement of Christmas mornings long since past.

Merry Christmas everyone and a very peaceful new year to one and all.

This really made me laugh when I first saw it the other evening. It actually made me laugh loudly. I think it came across even funnier because it initially appears to be an excerpt from ‘The Snowman’ original. Brilliant stuff, well worth a look and guaranteed to make you smile.