h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The place: Lime Street Station, Liverpool.

The substance: Turkish coffee. Well, presumed Turkish, if the middle-eastern looking gentlemen at the coffee shop were anything to go by. Presumed coffee, as the substance in the cup looked like black coffee, it smelt like black coffee, but a strange indefinible something about it was warning me to be cautious.

It came in a cup marginally larger than a thimble and slightly smaller than the miniscule things that aspirant hotels serve coffee in at the end of dinner. (An aspirant hotel: think of Fawlty Towers striving to get a star rating. any sort of star rating.)

Cautious movement of the container revealed that the scalding hot liquor inside swirled like recognisable coffee, and not like, for instance, oleous fuming sulphuric acid.

Several minutes elapsed while it cooled enough to allow for it to be drunk, or at least, sampled.

There was a feeling that I would lose face, or perhaps even a certain amount of essential pain-free bodily function, if I left it untouched in the presence of the Middle Eastern gentleman who had served me.

So I drank.

And it was vile.

Think "superheated superconcentrated Camp coffee essence with added caffeine and full-bodied in the sense that Jo Brand is full-bodied" and that's a start in describing the taste. A start, in the same way that describing Mount Everest as "tall", or the average professional footballer as "socially challenged", is a start in making an adequate description. But with an immense understatement gap stretching between the decription and the reality!

And there was no going back. I'd started, so I had to finish the wretched thing. It had cost me enough.

The worst of it was when the recognisable coffee liquid on the top was consumed.

This masked a thick black sludge which had all the quality and texture of freshly pumped crude oil. For all I know, it was.

At least half my original cup was primeval coffee sludge, ooze from the Paeleolithic period.

What did I do with this? Try to drink it? Eat it on a spoon?

Or (as I cravenly did) set it down, untouched, on the table and slink wretchedly away in the direction of Platform Eight, vowing to stick to Co-Op Instant in a half-pint mug, as I knew where I was with that stuff. (It might not be a snob brand or a connisseur blend, but by the Gods, it picks you up in the morning)

But Middle Eastern coffee - never again!

It's not bad with two teaspoons of treacle sugar!
But do stop before the mudlayer..!

Another disgusting drink.

I was in the paradox of feeling incredibly thirsty after an hour ploughing up and down in the swimming pool (Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink).

I bought a bottle of peach-flavoured sparkling water in Superdrug.

Do NOT touch this. It is foul and rank.

The taste?

Imagine, if you will, that somebody with incredibly sweaty ill-washed feet has doused them with peach-scented armpit spray as an alternative to the time and effort to be expended in actually washing them.

They have then marinaded said feet in an ill-tended Jacuzzi for an hour or so.

This water is carefully collected, bottled, chilled, and sold as Superdrug peach water(sparkling).

It then gets sold to you.

You try and drink it.

Avoid.