W

HEN I got married a few months ago, some friends clubbed together to get us a Nespresso coffee machine. It wasn’t a spontaneous gift idea; I’d lusted after one for ages. For me, a Nespresso machine represented the last word in affluence and sophistication. I am neither affluent nor sophisticated, but I thought it might serve as a magic passport to that sort of world.

As I tenderly unwrapped it, I marvelled at its sleek lines. My friends had chosen a cream model, which wasn’t the colour I would have picked. I would secretly have liked a more noticeable shade, like neon pink. Something that screamed: “LOOK, I AM A NESPRESSO MACHINE!” to any visitors to my kitchen. But truly affluent and sophisticated people, I reasoned, would probably favour a more understated tone, because they would be classy like that.

I set it up on my tiny kitchen counter. It looked slightly out of place next to my other appliances: a toaster with a bit of metal protruding where the handle should be; a microwave I inherited from a dead friend which seems to be haunted by his ghost, judging from the rattle it makes when nuking my food. The Nespresso machine oozed a frosty hauteur in such lowly company.

It had arrived with a varietypack of Nespresso capsules. Their shiny shells were the colour of jewels, and they all bore names which sounded like performance instructions on piano music. Capriccio! Livanto! Fortissio Lungo! Into the machine I loaded one caffeine bullet after another. Within seconds, out poured the creamy brown liquid: a secular transubstantiation.

Could I distinguish the taste of one capsule from another? Of course not! I wouldn’t be able to tell a Volluto from a Ristretto if my life depended on it. I slurped them all down indiscriminately, imagining myself chinking espresso cups with George Clooney on the shores of Lake Como as I did so.

It took roughly 72 hours for me to exhaust the capsule supply, by which time my face had developed the manic rictus of someone on an amphetamine bender.

“They’re finished!” I hissed at my wife, shaking the empty packet in horror.

“There’s instant coffee in the cupboard,” she said helpfully.

I looked at her as if she had just suggested that I drink my own urine. Instant coffee! Was I a peasant? It would take minutes and minutes to boil the kettle, spoon granules into a mug and season to taste! My new Nespresso lifestyle would not countenance such timewasting. “Fortissio Lungo!” I cried, and sped out the door to the nearest Nespresso vendor.

What awaited me there was a terrible reckoning. Each Nespresso capsule, it emerged, costs roughly the same amount as the jewels they so closely resemble. I quickly calculated that at my current intake of 12 capsules per day, I would be homeless by month end. I briefly imagined myself transacting sex for Nespresso capsules on a street corner, with all my other possessions in a window display at Cash Converters. I had to get a grip.

Since then, I’ve been buying inferior-grade capsules, the kind that would make George Clooney shudder. I ration them carefully, because even the knock-offs come at an indefensible cost when compared with the price of a jumbo tin of Ricoffy. But this is how it works, I’ve realised. They get you hooked, and then you’re done for. You can never go back to your old life.

Four months down the road, I am neither affluent nor sophisticated. In fact, I am poorer than ever. Poor, but full of beans.