I haven’t really been excited lately because with my powerful mind I tend to not sleep because I’m always thinking of ideas. Then I don’t sleep. When I don’t get enough sleep I get sad and sometimes cry.

This cycle is now being perpetuated by the fact that I cannot even blink and at the rate I’m consuming these espressos, I probably won’t ever blink again.

It’s now late afternoon and I have not slept since last night, I’m on the verge of a breakdown and can confidently let you know that I have no idea of what is currently going on. I don’t know about an economic recession, I don’t have any advice to give anyone and am fairly useless to you unless you need to know a thing or two about alcohol and caffeine.

But it’s comforting in times like this to know that you have some trusty sidekicks in the form of addictions. I’ve always been addicted to expensive stuff and it’s the reason I’m sitting here marvelling at the stainless steel and gold contraptions I have in the form of my Bialetti espresso maker and my Michel Herbelin Meharee. Something about wearing R6500 on my wrist appeals to the senses for some twisted reason.

Bialetti and Michel: My first loves… 

Granted not one phone call has been made through to my phone this weekend and I have spent the better part of the weekend playing with my own thoughts. But the great thing is that I’m not alone! Bialetti and Michel are here for me.

I’ve honestly lost count of how many espressos I’ve had throughout the night and throughout today. I remember having about 9 glasses of champagne for breakfast yesterday morning but the espressos escape me. I literally haven’t had espressos in years, but then I found this gift.

It’s just so good having something to do. I’ve been making espressos all day and am confident that my nerves are fried right now. The combination of alcohol and caffeine over the past three days is mind bending. I cannot stop shaking, am vulnerable to random outbursts of crying and the cycle of addiction to caffeine is unnerving.

I’ve got the 80’s DMX channel belting out music that is too gorgeous for words. We need to talk about the espressos though.

It’s a single serving machine which is marvelous. It’s almost as if this is a safety feature of sorts designed for me. I’ve been known to get addicted to things, and this helps break the addiction cycle.

Or so I thought.

I believed that having a machine that only makes one espresso at a time would be like buying only one bag of chocolates at the shops and keeping it in your cupboard. This way, if you want more, you need to drive to the shops to buy more. This way, you can’t ever overindulge.

But I’ve been smashing this machine the whole weekend and the coffee and orange juice and champagne has given me heartburn at such a rate I thought for a moment that there was a volcano inside me.

The fact that I have to grind my own beans, and go to quite some effort to make one espresso is alarming because it’s not slowing me down. It makes me think that maybe I do have too much time on my hands. But I can’t but help have nothing to do because I’m in Cape Town and this is what we do. We chill. We drink champagne. We drink espressos. And then we chill some more.

We go to the beach, we party and we work sometimes.

These coffee beans are amazing and I have been toying with the idea the entire weekend of whether to grind the beans and drink them…or just eat the whole bag.

A mixture of Ethiopian and Tanzanian coffee beans, the Tanzanian beans are farmed in the rich volcanic soils at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. The beans are the same ones that Woolworths serve in their Cafe’s, and let me tell you, they are absolutely superb! And organic which is always a good thing, one of the things I always look out for when buying food. At about R34 for a 250 gram bag, I’m looking at probably smashing the entire bag today. And then seeing if my head will fall off.

The Bialetti was apparently bought in the coffee shop in Rondebosch, in that hideous Riverside Mall. But worth paying the visit to get hold of a single shot stove top espresso machine.

It’s about 6pm right now, I’m going to make more espressos, try sleep as little as possible and then later I’m going to take a Viagra or three and go issue parking tickets with a raging mega huge boner.

Oh I also just bought these two espresso cups:

Oh yeah I also felt compelled to buy the 30th anniversary edition of Saturday Night Fever for R99 at Musica in Canal Walk.

You should be dancing…yeah!

I’m also fetching my Bear Gryll’s fire starter tomorrow, so failing any real human interaction it’s comforting to know that I’ve got enough espressos to kill me and enough tight pant Bee Gees inspired dance moves to make me laugh.

And we’ll always have fire….

We’ll always have fire…

Sean Lloyd

Editor