The age of caffeinated enlightenment.

Deep down I knew it was too good to be true, knew that it could not last forever - but for the three years it did last I was in heaven.

There had been a restaurant in the space opposite my office when I first arrived in Australia and I was forced to walk up the mall, forced to visit Gloria Jeans for my morning coffee fix. They were friendly enough in Gloria Jeans but the atmosphere was bolted on and the coffee was usually so bitter than it was almost undrinkable; a fact which added to the already-significant argument against entrusting espresso machines to sixteen year old kids. The first time I walked into Gloria Jeans, I asked for a ristretto and received a blank stare from the girl behind the counter in return. Pretty, definitely. Vacant and bored, undeniably. Clueless, absolutely. I sighed, ordered an espresso instead. It summed up my experience since arriving in Newcastle perfectly - nobody here knew what a ristretto was and when I asked for an espresso by way of compromise, the person who made it would very often look down at my drink, consternation written across their face as they asked me if I wanted it in a cup and topped up with water because "there isn't very much there". I would resist the urge to scream that's the idea you moron, that's how it's meant to be and politely decline their kind offer instead, all the time wondering why it was impossible to find even a half decent coffee shop within walking distance of my office.

Then came the day that changed everything. The restaurant opposite my office had been closed for months but for the last few weeks, someone had been renovating furiously behind those whitened-out windows. One Monday morning, on my way to Gloria Jeans for another bitter espresso, I noticed that the renovation across from my office had been completed. The dustsheets were gone, the floor to ceiling bifold windows were wide open and stools were set out on the footpath. The sign told me that the new place was called Bodega, that it was a coffee shop with an agreement to use Illy coffee. I had drunk Illy in the UK and remembered it fondly. Illy had ranked at number two in my all-time Coffee Top Five, so I decided to try this new Bodega place. After all, unless they offered me a 'mugaccino' or insisted on referring to my order as an 'expresso', surely it could be no more painful than a visit to Gloria Jeans?

And that's how I came to walk into Bodega for the very first time. The first thing I noticed was the huge blackboard wall above the counter, a list of available drinks written large in a confident hand, white chalk letters standing out against a newly painted, pitch black background. Sitting proudly at the very top of the list was one word: ristretto. I looked a second time just to be sure and then walked forward to order, immediately cancelling any plans to ever visit Gloria Jeans again.

It quickly came to the stage where I was visiting Bodega three times a day; once on my way in to work, once just before lunchtime and then one final stop at four o'clock, grabbing a little something to push me headlong through the final hour of my working day. By now I was on first name terms with Gavin, the guy who owned and ran Bodega. Gavin knew his trade, knew what he was doing. He was a coffee purist who refused to stock flavouring syrups because he didn't want to cater for 'people who want to hide all trace of the coffee in their coffee'. If someone asked for a syrup flavouring he would politely say that he didn't stock them, before offering to make their coffee with fifteen sugars as a compromise. Sometimes they saw the joke and sometimes they didn't. Sometimes his service was excellent and sometimes he worked on the theory that all good things were worth waiting for. I did not mind a bit - I was meant to be at work so the longer I had to wait for my coffee, the better as far as I was concerned.

I found out over time that Gavin was originally from Melbourne, that he loved most sports but had a penchant for basketball and football; specifically Manchester City. He also loved English television and what started as a five minute stop to order a coffee gradually evolved into longer stays as I stopped to talk with Gavin and the other regulars, to chat about anything from Barcelona FC's ownership structure through to the Obama election victory or the history of the Eurovision Song Contest. If I forgot to bring my money one time, not a problem. If I wanted to buy a tin of coffee, I got trade price. Soup or cakes left over at the end of the day, I got offered them. In this heady world of the Newcastle coffee mafia I was feeling like a made man, like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas - just with coffee as a replacement for drugs, guns and robbery. It was a good time and it stretched through three whole years being good. Then, as all golden ages must, it began to draw towards its inevitable conclusion.

Late last year Gavin announced that he was going to put Bodega on the market. He wanted to sell up and go back to Melbourne; buy a new place and make the same drinks but for different regulars, looking out of bifold doors that offered a different view of a different city. I held my breath, waiting with a rising sense of dread for the day he announced that a buyer had been found; that it was all over - a case of signed, sealed, delivered I'm yours. Until that day arrived I planned to carry on as usual; ordering my drinks, making my small-talk, looking for the positives. I hadn't had the heart to mention it to Gavin, but my own firm had been talking about moving offices anyway so maybe the timing would coincide, work out. If Gavin left town before my office moved, I would be spared having to tell him that I wouldn't be coming by any more, that we would have to see less of each other, that I would be forced to replace him, to find another snobby barista with a hatred of syrup to rock my world. Regardless of which one of us left first, it looked like a you-lose scenario in my book and all of a sudden, the golden age was starting to look a little tarnished around the edges.

Months passed. Potential buyers came, potential buyers met with lawyers, potential buyers disappeared. It became a pattern - Gavin was having plenty of interest but no real luck and as much as I expressed my sympathy, all the time I was silently thanking my lucky stars. Deep down though I knew that his business was thriving, that it had bucked the trend of previous occupants by managing to turn over a tidy annual profit. The opportunity was too good to go unaccepted forever and deep down I knew that a buyer would eventually arrive, that Gavin would eventually leave and take the atmosphere and ambience with him. My luck lasted until August before a couple from Canberra had an offer accepted and did what all potential buyers thus far had failed to do; get to the stage where contracts were signed and exchanged. It was official - Bodega was changing hands and Gavin would be going. My sadness was tempered slightly by the news that my own company had finally decided to move offices, that I would only spend one more month opposite Bodega before moving to plush new offices on the harbour. Even if the change of ownership ended up being for the worse, I only had to endure it for a month. I was pretty confident that I could manage a month.

The hand-over duly occurred and the new owners took the decision to ditch the Illy. They replaced it with a brand of coffee that nobody had heard of; a brand sourced and shipped from Canberra. This was the first test, the first crucial factor in deciding whether I would last the month under the new regime; if I didn't like the new coffee then my reasons for visiting would be in jeopardy. I sat there on that morning, looked around at the new and improved Bodega. In my hands I cradled my first new coffee on this first morning in a brave new world, feeling a rising sense of trepidation and a reluctance to bring the cup to my lips. Eventually I summoned up the courage, took a sip and the verdict was..... sort of okay. It was not fantastic but neither was it bad enough to go elsewhere. What was more, the new owners seemed friendly enough, seemed like they knew what they were doing, and I wanted to give them a chance, didn't want to write them off - it did not seem fair or just to write them off just because they weren't Gavin. Okay, the new owners had immediately added flavouring syrups to the menu and they had repainted the place green and white, but I could cope with that as long as the coffee wasn't terrible. I could even cope with the fact that they were playing a Kenny G CD - it just meant I would spend less time hanging around Bodega and more time sat at my desk working. That was no bad thing and my boss would certainly be happy about it so all in all I was feeling pretty proud of myself, proud of my ability to adapt and roll with the punches. Then I glanced down at the chiller cabinet to see that the new owners had added 'profiterolls' to the menu and my heart sank.

My rational side reminded me that an ability to spell was in no way linked to an ability to cook, to make coffee. The irrational side of me drowned it out, as it always did when this happened. I knew that I was being snobby and judgemental but I could not help it. The minute I saw a spelling mistake on a menu, I immediately lost any desire to give that business my money, to even be seen in that place in case people looked at me and thought that I couldn't spell either. That was the moment that the last light faded from that golden age, the moment that the Bodega days became part of history.

I can take comfort in the fact that we will take up residence in our shiny new office two weeks from now. In two weeks time I will look out of my office window and see a working harbour, not a coffee shop that looks very similar to one I used to frequent, to one I used to enjoy spending time in. I am told that there is no coffee shop near the new office, but that there is a coffee cart in the ground floor lobby of our new building. Some people are already getting excited at the news that the cart offers a discount if you bring your own cup, but not me. All I hope is that the coffee is drinkable and that it really is served from a coffee cart. If it turns out to be a Koffee Kart, I may be left with no option but to get my daily fix by freebasing Nescafé in the gents toilets - and something tells me that Ray Liotta would not approve of that.