A day where I've not spent at least an hour in some coffee shop or other would be like a London skyline without a pigeon somewhere scrabbling across it. I'm talking about an action so reflexive, so instinctive, it might as well be an adjunct to breathing. Perhaps it actually is.

I think we all leave our psychic footprints across whichever landscape it is we roam over daily. I long ago marked out my psycho-geographical terrain; it's central and west London, where the bulk of my life has been lived and where it's imprinted the deepest. Every paving stone, every brick, every wall has some of me sunk into it.

Coffee shops have for the part played, and continue to, a key role in this territory marking. Drunk coffee here, drunk it there. That's the story.

A day not spent flicking through the Guardian with a cappucino nearby is n't a day. I don't feel right. Something's missing. It's about preparing for entry into the rest of the day - the working day usually. Slow, gradual re-absorption into the world of the office. The world I left behind the previous day. It takes time. It takes coffee.