August 14th is widely recognized as a dark day throughout the pantheon of human history – North Korea split from South Korea, Joe Jonas was born, and some unfortunate barista somewhere went diva supernova on a customer for requesting milk. It’s also the day that James Hoffmann decided to take a sabbatical from his Sprudgie Award-winning blog, JimSeven. In his absence, we repeatedly mocked him, photoshopped him in drag, and followed along with the exploits of Anette Moldvรฆr, James’ partner at Square Mile.

Well, James is back now! He’s done that “photograph the coffee bags I drank last year” thing that everyone is doing, but far more interesting is his decision to look back at his own predictions for 2011, and let the predictive chips fall where they may. In some ways he was right – a producing country barista did indeed win the WBC! – in some ways he was wrong, but it’s all interesting to us. Best of all, Time Out London has run this jazzy interview with James, in which he addresses “the Kiwi thing” and goes into detail on why London’s coffee scene is so special right now:

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“The thing I think defines London’s coffee culture is the strength of its community. We have a really friendly, connected community where coffee shop owners and roasters know each other, and they don’t see each other as competition, they see the chains as competition, or bad quality places as competition.”

It’s a James Hoffmann media avalanche! We’re glad to have you back, James.

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