A thing about ‘novelty’ lattes

BRACE YOURSELVES – that unbearable time of year when everyone gets excited about ‘red cups’ will be upon us any second now. In the meantime, Starbucks is telling us all to drink spiced pumpkin lattes. No thanks. I’d rather drink my own wee like the Romans did in the old days to clean their teeth. (Google it.) The same goes for gingerbread lattes, roasted hazelnut lattes, spiced apple lattes, autumn bonfire-flavoured lattes and so on. Can everyone get a grip and just order a coffee.

If the world ever runs of of water in some kind of apocalyptic, Cormac McCarthy-esque fashion and the only thing left to drink are novelty lattes, then I would just about be able to stomach the eggnog version. When I was studying at LSE, I used to take a Venti-sized cup of it into the double history tutorial I had every Thursday afternoon, because it helped me struggle through a one-and-a-half-hour discussion about who was most responsible for the Suez Crisis. For a while, I got so high from my giant drink I wondered if Starbucks put a little bit of brandy into it. Turns out, they don’t. It’s just that one eggnog latte alone contains the annual sugar output of Jamaica. So I had to clean my teeth after that too, although not with my own wee.

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