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The world’s a stage

When I was about seven or eight, to ‘entertain’ our family, my sister would play the piano and I would ‘sing’ along in my  out of tune reedy little voice (it hasn’t changed all that much over the years I have to admit).  It started with some fairly standard piano lesson like songs,’The Pipes of Pan’ being a particular favourite of mine (I could sing it to you now if you like…Oh, the pipes the pipes of pan…), but as her playing and taste in music progressed we moved on to Elvis.  Most memorably, Are you Lonesome Tonight’.  My favourite bit was the spoken verse, which I would solemnly recite while my sister tinkled the ivories.  It started ‘Someone said the world’s a stage and each must play a part…’ (by the way Elvis, if you’re listening up there, it was Shakespeare who wrote that line, in As you like it).  It sparked my imagination even then to think we were all ‘playing a part’, and over the years it has become apparent to me that this is true, though we don’t play the same part all the time.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean we’re all pretending to be someone, or something, we’re not. Mind you, I bet we all behave differently at an interview than we do down the pub, but what I’ve really noticed is how we all feel the need to dress differently for different circumstances – wear costumes.

These days I pretty much live in jeans and tee shirt (all right girls, I’ll admit to jeggings if I must – well, they’re comfy, what can I say?) but back in the days of spending my time at the office, I’d always wear something ‘smart’. Not necessarily a suit, they were reserved for meetings, but certainly a jumper and skirt with heels, and this was even when I was working in the office on my own.  It was about feeling the part, feeling professional.  Still the same me inside, but I was definitely putting a ‘face on’, even make up, to perform my role.

Last weekend we were invited to a Celidh being held for a friends 60th birthday.  We don’t go to parties that often and I wanted to dress up a bit, look as nice as I could manage. As we would be dancing about, I put on some slightly posher jeans and a nice chiffon blouse ( the black one with stars on since you ask), and finished them off with some high heels, I felt good, but looking in the mirror with a critical eye I could see that I looked a bit, well, overdressed. There is clearly something instinctive about what to wear in any particular social setting.  As it happens I changed into a plain black tee shirt which turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.  To be honest I would have felt a bit of a trollop in my low cut blouse dancing about with all the other middle-aged, middle-classed conservatively dressed Celidh comrades, even though I have worn that outfit several times for sedate dinners in beautiful restaurants and felt a million dollars.

Yesterday I went to the hairdressers, one I’d not been to before. It was a bit chilly and I reached for my raincoat before setting off.  This is the raincoat that I regularly wear to the shops, or pretty much anywhere.  It is looking slightly the worse for wear these days and for some reason I felt that tatty old raincoat lady wasn’t the impression I really want to give, so I pulled on my posh wool ‘funeral’ coat.  I’m probably doing the lovely hairdresser a huge injustice, but looking that little bit smarter made me feel that somehow I would get better service, that they would take my overgrown mop of hair to be a sign of rich eccentricity rather than lazy couldn’t-be-arsed.

On close examination of my inner self, I find this phenomenon to be, at it’s roots, a class and power thing.  Looking smart equates to having more money. Having more money equates to being more powerful.  And in our perverse minds we often equate power with intelligence. Blokes in suits are perceived to have decent, well remunerated, jobs, whilst chaps in grubby torn jeans and hoodies are more likely to be viewed with suspicion, even though the former might be a drug dealer and the latter a working-all-hours to feed the family labourer.  Of course, we shouldn’t forget that many, many, too many, people don’t have the luxury of being able to choose what to wear anyway.

Whilst keeping my own unique style (!), I do like to feel ‘right’.  I’m going off for my weekly swim shortly and I’ll be wearing jogging bottoms that have never jogged, and a sweatshirt that’s never been sweated in.  But this is my ‘I belong here’ costume for the leisure centre. Tomorrow I’m off to a meeting at the town hall, and I’ll be dusting off my work costume to big up my confidence.  I may not be rich, powerful, or intelligent, but by god, I’ll look the part!

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Preaching to the converted

Dunno if I have mentioned previously that I bought my mum a kindle for her 90th birthday last year.  They’re great for older people who have trouble holding bigger books or reading the small print, and it’s been a stonking success with her.

Mind you, she doesn’t feel confident enough to order her books herself either through the device or through her laptop, so I have to choose for her.  If I say so myself I’m getting quite adept, and actually enjoy the challenge of choosing books that she might like, but I know I would absolutely loath…all the potboiler romances, the stuff about ‘the old days’.  She doesn’t like anything based abroad preferring descriptions of places she recognises, which is a bit limiting, but you’d be amazed at just how many of the ‘she was a poor girl, who fell under the spell of  evil Lord Whatsismame who imprisoned her in the cellar of his mansion where she found love through the soot covered coal merchant who had his own secrets…..’  (blimey that’s good –  I could positively write ’em myself!) genre there is.

Every now and then I sneak in something unexpected, and have pushed her to read things she wouldn’t have considered before.  Consequently she is now an avid Agatha Christie fan, and enjoys the odd biography.

She did do requests, but that has stopped since she insisted on getting, and then reading, Fifty Shades of Grey.  I’ve not read it myself (really not my cup of tea, prefer more eloquent and elegant writing) I did warn her.  I did – robustly, but still she insisted I download it for her.  Her response

‘eugh, do people really do that? Made me feel sick!’  needless to say she didn’t want the next two instalments.

What this exercise has reminded me though, is that, although we all may like different things, books can be compelling for everyone, if they take the trouble to find the right ones. You have to be prepared to be disappointed occasionally by dreadful, unfathomable plotlines, or irritating writing styles.  You have to expose yourself to genre’s that you may think you have no interest in – for instance  sci-fi may not be an obvious choice for us all, but they are just as likely to contain romance and mystery as the next book, and often the authors can employ unusual, creative, improbable, but thoroughly entertaining storylines to keep you engaged all the way through.

I’m the opposite of my mum.  I like to escape into a different world, whether that may be contemporary, historical or futuristic.  I want to really live with the characters, believe in them, and understand them and their motives.  Although there are many books I love, and am happy to reread, probably my favourite is A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.  Its a long book, a saga if you like, but I feel like I’ve visited the people in their homes, I know them.  I know the heat, smells, noise of the places they frequent.  I’m sad when I get to the end, even though I’ve read it several times now.  That’s what I want from a book.  Oh, it doesn’t have to be long, or heavy, I enjoy a good beach book as much as the next man, but only as long as the author can use language in a convincing, entertaining, emotional and readable way.

If I’m honest, there are one or two exceptions.  Despite the quite dreadful writing style which I found distracting, I did enjoy The Da Vinci Code, but couldn’t be doing with the other books in the series at all, I did give Angels and Demons a go…gave up after a couple of chapters though.

It is, of course, all a matter of taste. All I would say to anyone is Read.  Read a lot.  Read anything you fancy, and some things you don’t.  Life will be all the richer for exploring other worlds and ideas.

‘course…you’re reading this, so you know all that already (especially the read anything bit), so well done you, and spread the word!

 

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In memory of Bet

She never lived to experience the new water feature in the pond, which makes me sad. She would’ve liked it, she always enjoyed a shower under the old one…

Bet Lynch

Bet Lynch

Bet was one of our first goldfish. Brought home in a plastic bag with 16 others and placed proudly in the brand-spanking new pond that we had dug out with our own hands. We called her ‘Bet’ after Bet Lynch, the brassy barmaid from Coronation Street (see pic), because she was a white goldfish with just a smudge of bright red, much the colour of her namesakes lipstick, across her mouth (actually, when I looked for a pic, I was struck by just how much like her she looked – Bet Lynch’s hair looks positively scaley).

I named them all at the time, and many since, but now we have some sixty fish it is a bit hard to keep up. But I’ve still got Bob, who has red eyes and looks like he’s been on an overnighter; Squiffy, who’s got a dodgy mouth; sixpence, who’s only got one red eye so is half of bob (you have to be a certain age for that one!); Alice, who appears to be wearing a dotty headband; Jaffa, who’s scales look like orange peel; Bullet, who’s head is a bit of a strange ermm bullet shape; Big Red, who’s got a big red patch on his head; Splosh, who looks like he’s been dripped on with red paint, ….well, you get the picture..

Yes, sixty odd fish, in our little pond, interbred and jostling for position. We never meant to have sixty fish. Seventeen seemed about right. But they would breed, and now it is a tad overcrowded. But they seem ok. As indeed, do the frogs and toads that co-habit with them.

Damselfly

Damselfly

When we built the pond and brought those little fishes home we had no idea of the pleasure (or the stress) that having that little microworld would bring. I can spend hours just gazing into the water watching the fish busily going about their business, the waterboatmen skidding about over the surface, and the huge, exotic, damselflies swooping down for a sip of water. We worry endlessly about the clarity and condition of the water, whether or not the pump is blocked, whether it’s leaking, and we spend god knows how much hard earned dosh on different types of bacteria to keep the water balance right.

Now, the landscapers have changed it’s shape, from being hexagonal it is now circular, and in the process they managed to make a hole in the lining – fortunately only quite near the top. However, it let enough water out for our Bet to get stranded, and we found her lying caught in one of the plants, above the water on Saturday. Poor Bet, not a nice end.

We buried her, wrapped in a paper towel shroud, in the front garden (we’ve no longer any room for a goldfish burial ground in the back – the men haven’t mentioned finding any remains but there have been many burials over the years, not only of fish, but all the other small friends we once had too…mice and hamsters who died with what seemed quite alarming regularity).

Anyhow, our original little ‘Heath Robinson’ waterfall has today been replaced by a cascade around the pond’s entire circumference. And as I type I can see them laying paving slabs around it. From a distance it looks more formal. But don’t be fooled. That little microworld will still be the same. A playground for the fish and wildlife, and a beautiful distraction from the real world for us.

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Distractions Distractions

Sorry. I know I’m a bit tardy with this post. I’ve been a bit, well, busy. Busy-ish. I couldn’t really tell you what I’ve been doing all this time, just living I guess. But you know how it is, things get in the way of writing sometimes.

Of course, they shouldn’t. When I gave up work I was determined I was going to write regularly, and start earning a bit through it if I possibly could. Well that hasn’t worked out has it? It started off ok, stories were flowing, rhymes formed in my mind in the way other people’s minds form intelligent thoughts. But then I started doing other things. Cooking. Sewing. Crochet (am I someone’s granny for goodness sake?) and now….THE GARDEN…

Well, to be fair, I’m not actually doing anything at all in my garden, but the landscapers are, and I find it very, well, distracting. Even though they are busy working, bricklaying, pulling up, digging down, doing other stuff with big tools, even though they’re not spending they’re time peering in my windows, (and no, they haven’t got their shirts off), it does feel like I’m living in a goldfish bowl. And they’re noisy. Drilling, banging, concrete mixing, radio playing, electric something or other using…always with the noise..

Hah! The noise. The neighbours are getting a bit of their own medicine. Oh, don’t get me wrong, they’re not that bad. They are nice people. A nice family. A nice family who are a lot richer than us. A nice family who’ve got a pool.

Have you any idea how noisy kids in a pool can be? They screech. They splash. They shout. It’s never just a couple of them either, always dozens (at least it sounds like dozens) and the pool is right alongside our boundary, so we hear it all in glorious surround sound. Well, we did. We now have fence. BIG fence. MAN fence. And we’re hoping that it will bounce the sound back their way a bit.

Did I mention they have a jacuzzi too.

You’d think that would be quieter. A grown up thingy. Well, it is a grown up thingy. They certainly use it in the (very) late evening/very early morning. We know ‘cos of the giggling and the chinking of glasses.

Now, I’ve never really wanted a jacuzzi. They make me wrinkly, and the chemicals make my eyes sore. However, I have always, always, wanted a pool. I love swimming. I love the feel of the water slinking over my skin as I pull myself through along using otherwise rarely used muscles. I love to float (floating is my special skill… once in Tobago I was floating in the sea and a tiny girl came up to me and said ‘how’d you do ‘dat? Did Jesus teach you do ‘dat? I had to answer honestly ‘not directly’) or dive under the water and experience the other worldliness of it all, even in the local leisure centre swimming pool (top tip, never wear goggles in a municipal pool, it’s quite revolting what you can see in there). And I have been swimming there weekly for a while. For once using old age to my advantage. You see, they have an ‘over 50’s’ session, where everyone is wrinkly and odd shaped, everyone swims sensibly up and down, and no-one shouts. Almost perfect, but still not as good as having your own pool.

The irony is, that our garden is plenty big enough for a modest pool. And the amount the make-over is costing us would easily be enough to get one installed. Hang on a tick…just going to tell them to stop…Stop what they’re doing..what they’ve been doing for the last three weeks, stop with the landscaping, the bricklaying, the deforestation…stop….put me in a pool instead..!!

Nah, not going to happen is it.

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The truth about Balls – for Cinderellas everywhere

Every now and then we get invited to a dinner and dance or a ball.

‘ooh, how lovely’ I hear you say. Yes, the chance to get myself dolled up in a posh frock used to get me excited. Now, as a cynical, grumpy old woman, you’ll just hear me sigh and moan at the thought.

For a start, these ‘do’s’ are usually work related. The ‘Celebration Dinner’ or the ‘Awards ceremony’ during a conference. You’ve already had a day of smiling nicely, and all you really want to do is go and sit in a bar with your chums and a bottle of wine. The reality however, is that you get less than an hour to get yourself sorted and ready for an evening of torture.

You have a quick shower, then attempt to do your hair with one of those stupid hairdryers you get in hotel rooms. You know, the one’s where you have to hold the button down to keep the air flow going. What air flow there is – they invariably have the power of a fly flapping it’s wings past your ear. Consequently, hair isn’t that of a tennis girl-friend (how do they get hair like that?), more of the not-so-fashionably tousled variety. You put ‘
product’ on to try and tame it. It looks like its been dipped in grease and sticks out at right angles. Hair should not have corners, should it? Ho hum… on with the dress…

You will have chosen a suitable posh frock to wear. A nice posh frock, I have found, invariably needs some pretty mega underwear to make it look half decent on me. Strapless bra that digs in, and has potential to slip either up or down, and make you look squashed in funny places. Big keks. Big, big, keks. Big keks that hold you in so much you go cross eyed, and feel sick if you eat so much as a stick of celery at the dinner – neither can you go to the loo quickly, so can’t drink too much either (I have discovered though, that a certain brand of big keks has a special gusset that kind of opens so you can do what you need to without taking them off – who knew??? It’s made me look at red carpet celebs in a whole new different way). The dress is long…bit too long, need high heels. You’ve bought a beautiful new pair, that make you feel a million dollars. You’re tall, you’re elegant, you are a Cinderella look-alikey, you’re held in, and your feet bl***y hurt.

After tidying up the make-up you’ve smudged inadvertantly at some point of the getting ready-ness, you totter off, clutching your clutch bag, which you will have mislaid by the end of the evening. Arriving at the reception you grab a glass of free champagne and swill it down. Then you grab a second. You immediately regret that second one. It’s ok now, but the first glass of wine with dinner is going to mix with those darn bubbles and send you giddy fairly swiftly. Never mind, you are charming, though wish you could remember the names of the people you don’t recognise at all who seem to know you quite well.

Then there is the dinner.

You are sat at a round table with some eight other people, none of whom you have anything in common with, except perhaps the woman opposite, who you think you might get on really well with, but you can’t actually hear anything she’s saying, because the enormous table decoration separates you. Instead, you’re stuck with the slimey Mr I Am sitting next to you for the evening. Have another drink.

There’s the food to negotiate. Soup for starters. Eating soup daintly is a knack I’ve yet to learn. Then there’s the chunk of meat for main, and who thought strips of pasta was a good idea – are they having a laugh? Slippery and sloshy with sauce, guaranteed to slither down your chin. Pudding is so often that little row of three teeny tiny same but different things. One is so so, one is revolting, and the third is the smallest one, that is delicious and you wish you could have just had a big portion of that. Then there’s the coffee…..don’t get me started…see previous post…!!

Speeches. Oh hoo bloomin’ ray! Does anyone, ever like the speeches. Sure, everyone laughs politely, claps a bit, but really we are all wishing we could get to the bar (the wine on the table went very early on). Awards to be given out. Endless awards, with endless photos to be taken. By this time, I am nodding off, possibly with a bit of dribble coming out of the side of my mouth. Then the ENTERTAINMENT. A misnomer. Need I say more.

Of course, there is always the disco at the end. Dad dancing at it’s finest! It does liven everyone up a bit though, and I actually start enjoying myself. Of course, it’s enjoying myself with the abandonment of more than enough glasses of wine enjoying myself. Heaven knows what I look like. My shoes, taken off discreetly during dinner, lie abandoned under the table, I’m tripping over my frock and trying to shimmy despite my big keks, and slippy bra. Doubt anyone else remembers anyway, and it’s giving me the chance to bitch about everyone else’s odd choice of clothing for the evening. I wonder why that woman’s boobs are such a funny shape – could it be her bra?
Oh god, it’s a mirror…

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The best laid plans

Apologies to my armies of fans who are waiting on tenterhooks for my next words of wisdom.

Ok, though I do like to kid myself occasionally, I know I neither have armies of fans nor words of wisdom to divulge. But I do owe apologies, at the very least to myself, that I’ve been a bit tardy in writing on here lately.

You may remember, that this blog was supposed to be about my life as a newly freed-from-employment lady. When I left my job I had three and a half months of glorious freedom that I could write about, and I promised myself I would post at least once a week.

Then I picked up a couple of little contracts working from home, which have taking over my life a bit recently. Not that I’ve minded. I’ve met some lovely new people, both real, and twitter folk, surprised myself by writing about fashion accessories (like I know…), and had fun building databases, and finding IT solutions for stuff – what can I say, I am a geek.

Now though, it’s all slowing down. My little social media contract has come to an end, and I’m down from three to just one day a week for the other one. Slowly, I’m beginning to get used to having a bit more time again. It’s great. But I have to agree with the old cliche, I don’t know how I had the time to work.

I will never be a fantastic housekeeper, cleaning is soul destroying – you do it and five minutes later the dog has walked across the newly hoovered carpet with paws that have come directly from digging through to Australia (only a little bit of an exaggeration I assure you), but anyhow, my home has never been cleaner. I’m tidying and polishing, chucking stuff away willy nilly, and generally going all housewiferly. Who’da thought?

I’ve also got into sewing, not only making cushions, clothes, and tablecloths, but cross-stitching and crocheting too. My tidy home is being taken over by craft paraphanalia. As with all things, I’m a bit rubbish at all those things – far too impatient, but I’m learning and enjoying, and feel as if I’m growing a bit too. And it does tear me away from my beloved laptop, which is probably a good thing, as I could easily spend all day, everyday, sitting tapping away in a little imaginary world of my own, which I realise probably wouldn’t be at all healthy.

Of course that doesn’t mean I’ve given up writing all together, but just been busy doing other stuff lately.

Like volunteering. I applied to the local hospice as soon as I left work, I thought it would get me out of the house, and working in a team, all that sort of stuff, as well as helping me to be a useful member of society. Well, they didn’t have a permanent regular position open, so I’ve been doing odds and ends of admin for them. Now, guess what? I’ve got a project going for them. I’m working from home. Building a database. And a spreadsheet. On my laptop. Hey ho…

p.s. No, I’ve not been gardening. Our lovely patch is awash with weeds as it waits to have its makeover. And that’s another story…!

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Power to the Pink Parade

DSC_0213I was one of those sad kids last left in the line-up.  I couldn’t (and still can’t) run, throw, catch, jump or hit a ball with a bat, or racket, or my foot.  I am categorically, pants at sport.  It’s ok though really, ‘cos I haven’t got a competitive bone in my body either.

However, in June I will be doing the ‘Race for Life’ in aid of Cancer Research UK.  Last year I did the 5k with a friend, and this year I’m upping my game to do the 10k with one of my daughter’s for support (or to carry me…).  Of course, you will have guessed, I have no intention of doing any actual running, but I’ll walk as fast as I can.  Last year Net and I did run the last bit, the bit where people were watching and cheering, and I think we may have fooled one or two into thinking we were capable of running the whole thing.  My body knows different though.

I have to be honest, 5k isn’t that bad.  In fact, it felt almost like cheating, as I regularly walk the dog that far anyway, which is why I decided to go the whole hog and attempt the 10k this year.  It could be a mistake. An over-estimation of my motivation.  We’ll find out soon.  Whatever happens though I know it will be fun to be part of.

Its heartwarming to see thousands of ladies, all dressed up in pink, most, like me, who don’t do ‘that sort of thing’, going for it en masse.  Huffing and puffing our way round the course, chattering, encouraging, moaning, groaning… and, in a sad reflection of how pervasive this diabolic disease is, each of us have, pinned to our backs, our own story of encounters with cancer. Most, like me, are running in memory of family or friends that they have lost.

So, I’m in training.  Long walks, with an occasional 30 second burst (most I can manage) of jogging for good measure.  I’m looking forward to it in a quite nervous sort of way, and am hoping to raise just a little bit of awareness and maybe a bit of money for the wonderful work Cancer Research do.  Have a look at their website, and if you’d like to support them you you can do it through my sponsorship page here.

The event takes place after my birthday, so I’ll be a very proud pensioner when I finish!! Oh yes, I’ll finish…it may take a while….

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It’s all a matter of taste

‘Can’t eat ’em. Don’t like the look of ’em!’ the checkout blokey said to me at the supermarket the other day (yes, it was an older gentleman on the checkout, we’re very pc  ’round these parts ya’know).  He was referring to some mussels that I’d bought for our tea.  I love mussels, funny looking bits an’ all.  In fact I like pretty much most sea food, although on further discussion with said blokey, we decided whelks were overall a bit too chewy, unless you’d got the odd half hour or two to eat them.

I’ve always thought you shouldn’t be put off of trying anything by the way it looks.  Seafood in particular can look a bit, err, shall we say, challenging (come to think of it, so does a lot of my cooking… you should have seen my summer pudding the other day.  The special effects team from ‘Bones’ would have been proud).  It got me to thinking about likes and dislikes, foodwise, though.

We all have things we don’t like.  I have two brothers-in-law (brother-in-laws?? well, you know what I mean). Even though he’s 50 and should know better, one of them won’t touch any veggies except the odd teeny bit of a carrot, and is a proper carnivor, the other one doesn’t like meat all that much, much preferring to pile his plate with the green stuff.  My little niece rejects practically everything she is offered, except sweet things and…. black olives.  How weird is that?  My daughter’s wouldn’t touch olives until they were in their twenties.  They seem a grown up sort of taste.

Is there such a thing though?  We tend to give children bland uninteresting food, or sweetened stuff, or things in funny shapes – alphebetti spaghetti etc and then wonder why they are fussy.  I never did make different food for my children, they had what we had, and on the whole they ate it…curry’s, cous-cous, stir-frys, chilli – olives were one of the exceptions.  We didn’t give them much in the way of sweets (I know, I’m a cruel mother) but they are thanking me these days as, at the age of 26 they are still filling free, and they are open to trying all types of food both here and when they are in foreign parts.

Personally, there are two  things I really don’t touch (three if you count coffee…see previous posts).  Steak and jelly.

I have had an aversion to steak since seeing my dad’s plate graced with a whopping piece of meat that was oozing blood – he liked it rare.  Put me right off it did.  I’ve no doubt that if I tried it again now, I might like it, as long as it was cooked gently and not too chewy. I just can’t be bothered to try.  However, jelly is a different matter.

Apparently, when I was just a few months old, my mum tried giving it to me as one of my first steps towards solid food. I spat it back at her with contempt.  It was revolting then, and it is revolting still.  All jelly.  Strawberry, blackcurrant, orange, that gelatin stuff that holds the fruit together in flans, that grey wobbly stuff that makes a perfectly good pork pie into something totally inedible for me.  Any of it.  All of it.  Yuck.  Don’t know why, just, well, yuck.

My mum always insisted we had jelly and blancmange at my birthday parties.  I used to look at the hideous wobbling monstrosity, and was often tempted to push it from the window sill where it sat setting in the sun, but the thought of gobbets of the ghastly stuff splattered across the garden path, and me probably having to clear it up, stopped me.  The blancmange was equally bad by the way.  Basically thick milky jelly.  Yuck, yuck, yucketty yuck (to paraphrase Hugh Grant in Four Weddings).

Anyhoo, next time you invite me ’round, remember, I’ll eat most things, but for goodness sake don’t serve jelly, you might get it spat in your face.

 

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Tea for me please #2

Reading my last post back, I noticed that I failed to mention that although I don’t drink coffee, I am, in fact, a tea connoisseur.  Even I didn’t realise that until after I’d written it.  Perhaps it was when I counted the different teas I have in my cupboard.  Twenty.  Yep, twenty different teas.  There’s the bog standard fairtrade everyday tea bags (I like Diplomat ones from Aldi by the way!) and then there are packets of:

Camomile, Peppermint, Pomegranate & Raspberry, Cranberry & Raspberry, Fennel, Masala, Ginger, Selfridges Afternoon Tea, Boh tea from Malaysia, Tetley’s Earl Grey, Jasmine, Kiptagich Highland Tea from Kenya, Darjeeling, Fairtrade organic Breakfast tea, Sarawack tea from Borneo, a packet of herbal tea from Sri Lanka, Fortnam and Mason’s Orange Pekoe, Pure Ceylon from Sri Lanka and Highcrown BOP from Sri Lanka.

A fair selection I think you’ll agree.  Some of them have been hanging around in my cupboard for a while, but I’ve tasted them all. Many are brought from distant shores and remind me of holidays.

I’ve sipped a thick sweet black tea in a make-shift corrugated iron cafe by the sea in Turkey.  Warmed up with Jasmine tea after nearly being frozen to death, even in the brilliant sunshine, on the Great Wall of China.

The mint tea in Morocco was served from tiny silver teapots into little glass cups, in a sweetsmelling and peaceful courtyard tucked away behind the exciting and exhausting madness of Jemaa el Fna and the Medina’s.

Recently I had my first taste of Masala tea in India.  The slightly curried warmth of it will always remind me of collapsing by the pool at one of the fabulous hotels after a full-on day of exploring the mosaic cities, wonderful palaces and extraordinary rivers that make India such a fascinating and wonderful place to be.

Ginger tea was taken on a rooftop terrace in the sunshine, while contemplating the world of people wheeling around the brilliant white Boudhanath Stupa in Katmandhu, Nepal.

Without a doubt though, the best cup of tea I have ever had, was after a very long and arduous journey in a jeep up into the mountains of Sri Lanka.  We’d travelled through rising seas of tea plantations, lush and green, dotted with women in colourful sari’s plucking the leaves.  We were hot and sticky when we eventually stopped to visit one of the factories.  The manager there greeted the four of us (me, husband, two 14 yr old daughters) warmly, and took us to one of the fields where we learned about the bushes and their growing habits, and the different types of tea.  We then saw the tea itself in different tubs depending on quality (always look for Orange Pekoe!) and were told, somewhat disconcertingly, that the tea bags we get in England are made of the equivalent of the sweepings from the floor!

After the, fairly brief, tour, we were shown into a beautiful, fan-cooled room, where there were huge soft sofa’s that we were ashamed to plonk our grubby selves on.  We did nonetheless, and sat and enjoyed the comfort after the bashing around we’d had in the jeep.  Tea was served to us by a beautiful young Sri Lankan lady dressed in an simple orange sari.  She poured from a proper teapot, into proper china cups.  The tea was black, and untainted by sugar.  It would be impossible for me to describe the flavour, but I would say that it was exquisite, subtle, and refreshing.  To top it all it was served with a slab of perfect chocolate cake.  I was in heaven.

Of course, as well as my travels, tea reminds me of a nice cup of tea with my mum after a hard day at school, and all the time’s when I’ve come home from work feeling grumpy and a cuppa has made me feel better.  Some of the tea’s in my cupboard have been bought for me by my daughter’s when they have been on their travels (Malaysian BOH, and the Sarawack from Borneo for instance), which makes me proud and happy too.

So yep, I admit it, I’m Kaye and I’m a Tea-aholic!

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Tea for me please

For the first time ever yesterday, I went into a Starbucks on my own.  Actually, I’m not sure that I’ve ever been in a Starbucks at all before, so it was a new experience for me.  I’d like to say here and now, that I won’t be going back.  Nor will I be venturing into any other ‘coffee shop’.

For a start I don’t drink coffee.  Tried it a few times, but just the smell makes me feel slightly nauseous and lightheaded.  Last time I drank coffee was at a dinner party some 20 years ago.  We’d just moved in to a new house, and were invited by kindly neighbours who were, frankly, ordinarily a little too posh for the likes of us.  We didn’t know any of the other four couples there at all.  It would have felt very unsophisticated to ask for a cup of tea instead, so I took the coffee served in tiny cups at the end of the meal, and tried not to turn my nose up at it as I drank it.

Pretty much instantaneously, I felt my head swim, things went a bit blurry, and I felt the need to excuse myself to head to the loo to slosh some water on my face.   The next thing I knew I was sitting on the floor on their deep-pile carpet with my head between my knees, having passed out cold.  Very sophisticated. They all thought I was drunk.  I wasn’t, which was apparent by my swift recovery. But once they realised I was sober as a judge, everyone made a big fuss, and a doctor was called.  I felt a right twerp.  All I wanted was a cup a’ rosy.

Anyway, I’ll never know whether it was the coffee that made me faint, it doesn’t seem to have that effect on anyone else, but I haven’t drunk it since.

So, anyway, I was hanging about, very bored, waiting for a train yesterday, and thought I’d get myself a cup of hot chocolate (I can’t abide tea in plastic cups).  Starbucks was the only place in the near vacinity, so I braved it.  Oh, the smell.  Do you know (I expect you do) that they have a pile of coffee beans, just loose on the top of some machine….eewww….!  All I wanted was a cup of hot chocolate, but I had to make decisions about what size/type, and I also had, for some unfathomable reason, to tell the girl my name.  Then go and queue for my drink.

It was ok.  Lukewarm for hot chocolate, even without the pile of cream I was offered.  I had to sit on a primary school sized stool at a bench table.  Can’t say I enjoyed it.  At all.  But it killed some time – all of five minutes, mostly queueing.

I am, I admit, slightly jealous of all those other folk happily ordering their fancy named beverages. Knowing the difference between a latte, a macchiato, cappacino and espresso, not to mention the different versions of them.  I do still feel very unsophisticated compared to those who sit with friends slowly sipping something frothy, or people who rush about clutching enormous plastic cups of something or other that they seem to need to just fuel them through their day (they must be loaded too – have you seen the price of those things??? And why don’t they need the loo all the time???)  However, I have learnt in my old age, that the one thing that makes anyone seem sophisticated is their being able to ask for what they want with confidence and ease, and without embarrassment.

So these days, if I’m coming ’round to your house, put the coffee maker away and make sure you’re stocked up on tea bags – you know that’s what I’ll be asking for.