We’re already over a week into 2008 and I haven’t posted a thing. In that case, belated New Year greetings and seasonal wishes to you. I hope that this brand new year brings you everything you’ve ever hoped and dreamed for.

This is a shitty time of year for me, as I am not a fan of the holiday season, cold, grey weather, or my birthday which is also falls this month. Another year down the drain is all I can think.

I’m going to be 45 this month, which is undeniably middle-age, or at least how we define it. The reality of me actually making it to 90 is laughably ludicrous, which makes the term middle-aged a total sham in my case.

I don’t feel 45, not that I even know what 45 should feel like. I still feel 15, which could say more about my stunted emotional growth than anything else. Ageing is the physical process, maturity refers to your mental age. Maybe I am 15?

Sometimes I think I am obsessed with ageing and growing old; it’s even a category on my blog. I do think about it too much. It’s the passage of time that really gets me, not the growing old.

My life is finite. I only have so much time and with each day that slips by, I have less. If I am really hoping to accomplish anything with my life, I better get my skates on or come to terms with the reality that my dreams will never come true. I’m not sure which one is worse.

The change in the calendar, combined with a milestone birthday is really bumming me out. You see, even hippies get the blues. Forty-five years of underachievement and failure can have that effect on even the cheeriest of souls and trust me fuckers, the last thing I am is cheery!

What’s a poor hippy to do?

The usual, just keep plodding along, doing whatever it is I do and distracting myself as best I can. If it weren’t for soft drugs and consumer purchases, my life would be as empty as a void in deep space!

Oh and don’t forget my exercises in creative futility! I am going to record that album of original northlondonhippy music!

And I am going to work on my novel. My real novel, the one I have been planning for over a decade. I did knock out 2 other novels in the last few years, the second one will be published soon I hope. They’re not under my real name, they’re not even under my hippy banner. I don’t really count them, but they were fun to write.

My real novel will actually be done under my REAL NAME. I don’t do anything under my real name, so that should tell you how serious I’m taking it. It’s also why I’ve been taking so long with it, I want to get this one 100% right. I want it to be a literary masterwork, which perfectly captures the human condition.

I want a lot of things.

Like right now, what I want is a high-end, pump driven, espresso machine and this has become my latest obsession. I’ve been hanging out on a couple of coffee-obsessive websites, CoffeeGeek and HomeBarista are my two current favourites. If you’re serious about coffee, you should really have a look.

Don’t laugh. The pursuit of the perfect espresso is right up this hippy’s street. After all, caffeine is a drug and we all know I dig drugs and I also adore a good ritual as prerequisite to enjoying any drug. Espresso extraction is a skill and at the hobbiest level and beyond, it becomes a religion.

There are some seriously serious people out there making some amazing coffee at home and I want to be one of them. I’ve been doing research online for the last month or so and am now ready to take the plunge.

The first thing I learned is that the grinder you buy is every bit as important as the espresso machine you choose. And if you’re serious about coffee, you will only want beans freshly roasted, they start to go stale after around 2 weeks. You need to spend at least 50% of what you spend on the espresso machine, on a decent grinder.

Pulling the perfect shot of espresso isn’t simple, it requires knowledge, practise and skill, but if you can master this, you will be rewarded with exceptional coffee every time.

The home espresso scene is nowhere near as big in the UK as it is in north America, but there are several companies specialising in high-end kit. After a lot of research and careful consideration, I’ve decided to go with the Rancilio Silvia espresso machine, paired with Rancilio’s Rocky grinder - the doserless model. It has quite a good reputation with aficionados online, but is not an easy machine to master. I think that’s part of the appeal, that I will have to work hard to get the best results.

That’s what hobbies are; distractions from reality. My new found coffee obsession is a healthy diversion from the things that bring me down. Once I have perfected my extraction technique and I am regularly fuelled with the finest cappuccinos, expertly crafted, I will be buzzing with caffeine. That in turn should inspire me to spend more of my increasing limited free time, writing. Everyone wins!

I’ll be ordering my new machine hopefully this week, as soon as they come back in stock following a rush on them for xmas. I’m hoping that by next week, I’ll be brewing my own, right here in my north London lair. How fucking cool with that be!

My life might not be perfect, but at least my coffee soon will be!