For some reason, I drink quite a bit of coffee in the office. As it is of the standard watery kind, the so-called Americano in fancy British cafés as of a couple of years ago, it is not as bad as real coffee, I suppose. Over the years, we had all kinds of coffee machines in the office. Until recently, we paid for the privilege on a quarterly basis and drank as many cups as we pleased. A couple of months ago we got a new machine, which requires twenty pence per cup. No coins, no coffee. This is a simpler way of dealing with the expense, but one has to have the damned coins. The machine takes only one-, two-, five-, ten- and twenty-pence coins. It does not return any change. When there is someone in the headquarters, there is no problem getting all the change you need, but I come so early in the morning that I am forced to go without the magical potion if I do not have the coins of the right kind. This is what happened this morning. To my horror, my stash of change was empty. It was six o’clock. However, an hour later I noticed that Rachael Luck, my friend and colleague with whom I share the office since last year, had a small pile of coins on her desk. And so I had my first hit of coffee with borrowed money. Stolen money, to be precise. Knowing that she comes to the office between nine and ten, I was eager to replace the two twenty-pence coins I took from her desk as soon as possible. Exactly at nine the headquarters opened, I got a bunch of coins, and restored Rachael’s treasure in haste. I even made sure that the coins appeared undisturbed. Thanks to my bourgeois upbringing, for half-an-hour or so I did feel like a thief.