The slow, bitter drip of becoming what I hate - one brew at a time

I went to a coffee shop yesterday. This is something I do quite regularly and I hate myself for it.

- Steve Canavan

Five years ago I used to roll my eyes at the ridiculousness of people who spent several quid a day buying coffee when, for the same price as one of their posh cappuccinos or frappe lattes, they could buy a tub of instant coffee which would make them 100 brews.

I remember when one family member - not on my side of the family I hasten to add - came to visit and refused to have a coffee because it was out of a can, made with hot water from the kettle.

"Oh, I don't do instant," he said sniffily, and sat for the whole visit pointedly sipping a glass of tap water. 'What a pompous twit,' I thought.

Well, I regret to report that five years on I've turned into a bit of a pompous twit myself.

Don't get me wrong, I'll drink any coffee I'm offered, but I do tend to stop pretty much every day to sit in a café and drink a coffee, or buy a takeaway.

This is an appalling thing to do, not least because one of these coffees now generally costs upwards of £4, which isn't an insubstantial amount of wonga. I mean you could feed a family of four on that for a day, and I'm using it to spend 10 minutes sipping some caffeine.

The weird thing is that I don't even particularly enjoy it - it's just slowly become something of a habit, like putting the bins out or picking your nose or singing the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues to a herd of cows when walking in the countryside (that last one is possibly just me, I don't know).