World's End Coffee Company

Thought I’d better get this blog posted just in case those pesky Mayans were right and the world ends tomorrow (21 December 2012). And what better way to start the end of the world than with a nice cup of fresh coffee.

Unfortunately I am staying at a Holiday Inn, renowned for the producing the largest amount of the second worst coffee on the planet.

DO NOT DRINK

Fortunately, I took precautions and brought some of our regular of Brazilian coffee with me from France. 

Intermarché's finest

I know this sounds like taking Marmite and Baked Beans to India so you don’t have to eat the ‘funny foreign food’ but good coffee is good coffee so why compromise? When I get a moment I will find a nice jug to make it in, meanwhile I have a couple of oversize paper cups and a strainer …

* Serving Suggestion. Mouse and keyboard not included.

It works for me.

To be fair to Holiday Inn, their coffee is marginally less-worse than the strange concoction served by Starbucks. I cannot understand how this chain of liars and cheats has become so popular. Among their many crimes against civilisation is the effect they have on independent coffee shops. 

They seem to be everywhere, they just carry on as if they owned the place, they have enough money to get away with the sort of behaviour which would land most of us in jail and their principal product is a shallow representation of what it purports to be - in short the Jimmy Savile of coffee retailing. 

I hope one day their share a similar fate and have their names expunged from history.

Artists impression

Here in Dubai, Tim Horton is doing his best. Not only is his coffee shop twice the size of the Starbucks next door...

Picture from CIA files

His sign is a little more prominent.

Tim's Hording

But before we all slap young Tim on the back and carry him aloft in a victory parade around the town, Tim Hortons is not a plucky little local independent, it is another massive franchising operation and are probably as bad as their neighbour – or would like to be. 

There is a fabulous prize to be won. To enter, use your skill and judgement to find a disgraced celebrity to represent Tim Horton’s (or write a sterling defence in no more than 10,000 well chosen words). 

Post entries in the comment box below. [Now then, now then... Ed.]