If it’s Wi-Fi you yearn for, if you know the difference between a grande and a venti – or, even stranger, care – and if your idea of an adventurous afternoon is sinking into the not-quite-as-comfortable-as-it-looks pastel-coloured velveteen cushions of an overstuffed armchair, then you are better off in your local Starbucks than the often quite austere surrounds of a Turkish coffee house.

There are fancy ones, of course, but be prepared for chipped Formica tables, straight-backed wooden chairs and even knee-high wobbly stools. It is a hardship worth enduring. Starbucks and its ilk are essentially places to don headphones and tune the world out. People do meet to converse – but in the hushed tones of a cocktail-lounge booth in a suburban mall, not to be overheard. A coffee house is a public place (like the “pub”), the heart of something, a place to speak to the world and find out what is going on.