On the twelfth day of Christmas, the UK gave to me:
12 Strikes-a-drumming
11 Taxes rising
10 Lords a-leeching
9 Landlords squeezing
8 Sewers leaking
7 Bills a-soaring
6 Trains a-cancelling
5 PER-CENT RATES!
4 Crumbling schools
3 French strikes
2 Two-hour queues
And a pothole in a B-road.
Probably the only time I'll ever wonder whether the Tetley Tea Folk are in a retirement home. ☕๐ค
"Is this a cup I see before me, handle toward my hand, come let me clutch thee."
Shakespeare's abandoned first draft where Macbeth has tea and cake with Duncan and they all lived happily ever after. ☕
Reflective thoughts start to slowly mingle with the steam which rises from my cup, and, ever the gentleman, asks it to dance. ☕
There isn't a fanfare as I open the kitchen cupboard to grab a teabag, but there should be. ☕
The hourglass
Encased in brass
It sits there looking grand.
Like Time itself
Upon my shelf
It's built on shifting sand.
The forecast for the next ten minutes or so, sunny with outbreaks of imagination and scattered pondering. ☕
I wonder do I ponder more?
Or ponder do I wonder more?
Drinking every fresh-made brew
Though I suppose both could be true.
To join the two is to combine
To plumb Imagination's mine
From every sip and every sup
There's gold, somewhere, in every cup. ☕
I sip and muse and I recall a time when my dad would fill his tartan Thermos flask with boiling water and place the teabags under the cup and off to work he'd go.
I don't know why but it was always a tartan Thermos. Probably part of the Bricklayers Code. ๐งฑ☕
Teabag and spoon, mashing in perfect harmony until just the right colour is...not yet...one more mash...nope...one more...until just the right colour is achieved. ☕
The teabag slam-dunks itself straight into the mug as I launch it from at least 6 feet away.
One of life's little victories that means nothing and yet everything at the same time. ☕
A bit like following faint footprints in the sand; you know the tide will eventually wash them away but you instinctively know which way to go. ☕
The Coziness Of The Long Distance Supper - the story Alan Sillitoe wrote when he stopped being an Angry Young Man. ☕
If I was still in the Cubs I could guarantee you two things - firstly, I'd have my Tea Drinker's badge, and secondly I'd be the only 6ft2, grey-haired Cub in the UK! ☕
I'm headed up North
where tea tastes much better
but why, I don't know, ๐ค
it's not that it's wetter. ☕
Liberace - Fibonacci
Brian Lara - Kate O'Mara
Peter Cook told Barry Took
Paul Weller's a tall fella
Wayne Rooney - all the Moonies
Rusty Lee and Kiki Dee
Houdini - Mussolini
The Dalai Llama - Sir Keir Starmer
Michael Jackson - Toni Braxton
Robert Plant's a supplicant
Martin Clunes is farting tunes
Foo Fighters - Sue Ryder's
Doris Speed in Harris Tweed
Vincent Van Gogh - Tony Han Cock
New York is True North
Mick Jagger - Merle Haggard
Eddie Wareing - steady bearing
Billie Eilish fights the Irish.
Celebrity indemnity
Pay no attention
To this invention.
Lady Macbeth never could get this tea-making malarkey completely right and thought she could merely command the liquid into the cup- "Out, out damned pot, out I say!" ๐ซ☕
I'm not sure where or when I'm gonna spend my extra hour
I'm not sure if I have the right to exercise such power
For Time is a museum and we're all briefly curators
But let's be honest most of all we're just procrastinators.
Much like meeting an old friend after an absence, no words need to be exchanged, just the knowledge that you're back in safe and reliable company. ☕
I dunk the teabag tentatively in the mug as if I'm a painter looking for that perfect colour on their palette. We're all searching for that perfect shade of tea. You know it when you see it. ☕๐
Applaud the curtain call of summer
As winter waits in silence in the wings
Autumn speaks the lines of fallen colour
In hibernation, hope eternal springs.
living between
the tick
and
the tock
we never get time
to stop and take stock
before we arrive
and after we've gone
Time's the great orchestra
Now's the lost song.
Innit, though, I can't keep pace,
Is 'wicked' now so out of place?
I hear the kids all now say 'bless'
This parlance lark, such a mess
But stop to think what all this means
Our language and its fading genes
Fashions rising-fashions sinking
'Right-on, man'-'blue-sky thinking'.
I ponder then I contemplate
I reckon and I muse
Tea's the drink
It makes you think
We even leave reviews! ๐ซ☕
Do I love my country? I mean, there are parts of it that I actively dislike, but on the whole I love the people, the humour, the scenery, the cities, the cultures, the tenacity and the determination of the UK to get on with things. Does that make me a patriot? That's a trickier question to answer.
I've had my face painted with the cross of St. George and flown flags from my car windows during international football tournaments. I mourn along with the nation every Remembrance Sunday but rarely visit a church unless it's to lay someone to rest or to see someone get christened or married. I guess I'm like the vast majority of Brits. I'm happy for people to do whatever they want, pray to who they want, dress as they want, even behave as they want, as long as it doesn't impinge too much on my life.
Despite the Tweets we may read or the headlines that are made, most of us are a tolerant lot. I'll agree that it seems we're becoming more intolerant as time goes by but we'll put up with a lot before we complain. But am I a patriot? I think that word has been co-opted by a certain demographic which I, myself, could quite easily be mistaken for. The white, middle-aged man, much maligned recently by Gary Neville in a video that has split opinion. I'm on Gary's side. Apologies if you find yourself on the other side. I'll explain why I am.
If you profess to love your country then what does that actually mean? It's OK hanging a few flags from lamp posts and painting a few roundabouts but how is that loving your country? If the act of patriotism is tinged with a 'Love it or leave it' attitude to others then you're arguing that only those who love their country should be allowed to stay. Samuel Johnson famously said that 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' People left with nothing else can resort to patriotism and use it for dubious means. Whether that's frustrations at politicians or frustrations at how your own life has turned out, the resurrection of patriotism (surely something reserved for the Last Night Of The Proms?) feels distinctly un-British. We don't normally like to express ourselves. We don't tend to argue or make a fuss. Aren't we supposed to 'Keep Calm And Carry On'?
So no, I'm not a patriot. I have a certain love for this country built on the people I know and who live in it, although not necessarily because of all of its institutions.
Patriotism, much like our nations flags, should not be wielded like a weapon. If it is, it ceases to be the thing in which we believe. If you've got this far then you'll have your own opinion on patriotism and the flag. Maybe you served? Maybe it means more to you than me? That's fine, because tolerance and freedom of speech is definitely something I love and can get behind.
I might even fly the flag for that!
Memories are the cheques we once wrote to our former selves.
That's why we keep them in a memory bank.
I wake and do my puzzle game
I ache to wake my sleepy brain
My bones they need much more coercing
"Warning! This body is reversing."
you can ooh!
you can ah!
you can smack your lips
you can sip along to Radio 4's pips
you can slurp
you can burp
you can iron your shirt
you can swallow
you can wallow
that you're off to work
tea is the redeemer
tea is the salvation
savour the flavour
saviour of a nation. ☕
Contemplating all things in the universe, but mainly the question of where I have put my shoe polish? ๐ค☕
Where do all the teaspoons go?
I had them in this drawer
they must be somewhere in this house
I'll have to buy some more.
But this brew, here, it cannot wait,
it can't afford to linger,
promise you won't tell a soul,
I'll stir it with my finger. ๐คซ๐☕
We'll begin today's (silver) service with the first hymn, I Vow To Tea, Thy Country, and finish with Abide With Tea. ☕
Light from a distant star reaches my eyes,
traversing a universe to find me -
a long and unbroken journey
through the dark, guided only by time.
At last it falls upon me. I wonder:
will my light ever find such distant eyes?
I have a coffee caddy and a sugar caddy sitting either side of my tea caddy. Guess which two are the ugly sisters? ☕
The Northampton clouds are looking a little off-white and have taken on the appearance of over-boiled linen. They're not exactly threatening rain but they're fairly sure they know how to get hold of some. Sunday's deafening silence tells us exactly who was in charge of the linen.
Northampton is dark with cloud yet brighter skies cling faintly on to the horizon. Imagine a frown that's finding a way to be happy. Autumn lurks, ready. Today it seems like we're in full dress rehearsal for the season to come. Leaves twitch in the breeze. They know their fate.
In Northampton the white clouds are clumped tightly together with tinges of black and grey. Like a heap of discarded cotton balls after a lady's removed her mascara.
Perhaps Imagination
Is the true reality
And we only get to see such truth
Through endless cups of tea. ๐ค☕
"The fast train to Imagination is now leaving from Armchair One. This is a direct service." ☕
Marmite Mondays. It's not everyone's favourite day or even everyone's favourite metaphor, but it starts another week and there are many who wish they could do that. Monday isn't about endurance, it's about finding little victories hidden along the way - like Tuesday. ๐
Sunday's warm hug greets me like an old friend. Sunday gives you the confidence to aspire to do nothing or in which to do anything. It's quite unlike any other day of the week. A free pass from life, if you like. A get out of stale free card. You can do it! Or not. That's Sunday.
The Tea Rex died out not because of a catastrophic comet strike but because its arms were too short to sup its daily cuppa. ☕๐ฆ
The book of your day was held upside down
There's no need to scowl and no need to frown
Cos when all's been done - or yet to be said
Remember you start and end all days in bed.
Savour the tale contained in those pages
Narration's flirtation - your สooq for the ages.
Einstein, a voracious tea drinker, originally calculated E=Mmm Tea² before modifying it ever so slightly. ☕
The First Cup Is The Deepest - the original title of the song by tea aficionado, Cat Stevens. ☕
Early mizzle seems to hang in the air like an uncleared throat. My parched lawn has started showing the tiniest hints of regrowth though not enough to convince a balding man to ditch his wig. Sunday silence, the amuse-bouche before we gorge ourselves on the cacophony of the week.
Five...
Four...
Three...
Two...
One...
Sit down.
We have sit down for the first cup of tea. The Imagination has just left the launch pad and should dock with the orbiting Inspiration in tea minus one sip. ๐☕
Between every tick
Between every tock
Now is all
Life just happens.
Between every tick
Between every tock
There be how
There be dragons.
Am I the only one who takes the cup and passes it through the steam coming off of the kettle and go, "Tonight Mathew I'm going to be..."?
Thought so. ☕
This early morning carries itself the same way confidence tricksters carry themselves. We know it's going to trick us into thinking the rather pleasant start won't turn into a real scorcher by this afternoon - but we have no idea how it goes about it.
Roll up! Roll up! ๐
NOW WE SIP...
now, we sip
at the boundaries of existence
as far away as we can possibly be
from the future
or the past;
now, we sip
at the boundaries of existence
as far away as we can possibly be
from the future
or the past;
now, we sip...☕
The second hand on my bedroom wall clock ticks its way around the clock face in crisp, staccato beats.
The hour hand, immovable it seems, turns to the minute hand and says, "Youngsters, eh? When will they ever learn?"
The golden, richly decorated, illuminated first initial in the dusty manuscript of today. ☕
Dappled woodland path
Sunlight by invitation
Effortlessly cool.
(๐ท photo taken 19th June at Hunsbury Hill Country Park)
The 'lost' passage in the Bible that explains the invention of tea.
Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden
Kicked out by God because of their thieving
Sinful and naked they sought some relief
They covered their shame with the humble tea leaf. ๐☕
The bedroom fan whirrs a weak apology for barely keeping me cool overnight. It gathers dust most of the year in a dark corner.
I tell my wife, "Next year we'll definitely get an air conditioner."
It's always next year.
Like that book you never write.
It's just fan fiction.
I'm pondering away like a good 'un -
Just how many trees does it take to form a wood?
Which Blue Peter pet lived the longest?
Why is chocolate so bad for you if its seeds come from a fruit?
Pondering - one of the great things you can do with a brew. ☕๐ค
I wake from sailing
a sea of dreams
I spy land in this cup
(or so it seems)
I'll wander its shores
I'm not in a hurry
I'll amble a while
free from all worry. ☕
Oiling The Great Pondering Machine and wondering where it will take me today. ๐ค☕
This drizzle is having a crisis of confidence. It hangs nervously in the air, wishing it was light enough to be mist. Gusts make small puddles shudder as if a tiny giant is walking the Earth, and the big trees sway as if they have a very tall yet invisible dance partner.
If Now becomes Then
And Then becomes Now
How is Time constant
Yet we're not, somehow?
If Time's an illusion
With no clock to tick
Just who's the magician
And what is the trick?
Saturday; the younger, more impudent sibling of Sunday, plays with free abandon, whereas Sunday studies hard, though for what we are not told, and dismissively tuts at Saturday's antics.
Between you and me I think that Sunday is somewhat jealous of Saturday's wild independence.
First cup of tea:
(damn)
(out of tea bags)
First cup of coffee: Second amongst equals. ☕
The humble omnipresence of that first cup of tea; it has the melancholic beauty of a rainbow - both have no end yet they're both destined not to last. ☕๐
I dreamed I dreamed a dream in a dream
I dreamed I dreamed that, too,
I dream so much it's hard to gleen
The old dreams from the new.
But what if I am dreaming now?
Here comes the big plot twist,
What if I'm just dreams, somehow,
And I just don't exist?
First ponder; I drink from my 'Happy 40th Birthday' mug and wonder many first cups have passed since that time. ๐ค☕☕☕⏳
It's 6,384, if you're interested, but I needed the calculator on my phone. Happy 6,385th to all you mundane ponderers out there. ๐งฎ☕☕☕
The morning sun promises a warmth which eases the bones but reminds us to carry a cardigan. Spring is a calmer, more softly spoken warmth than summer. Its smile, while not as radiant, won't leave us looking like freshly-baked lobsters.
Time waits for me as I wake late. It tuts and points to its watch, which is a funny thing for Time to be wearing, if you think about it. Who'd wear a tiny version of themselves on their wrist?
I then wonder if I'll spend the rest of the day as confused as this?
Time will tell.⌚
I've never finished the novel, Frankenstein. I've read it in parts. ๐
It's what the author would've wanted. ๐ฆถ๐ช๐ฆต✋๐๐๐ง
sip like a duchess
with a pinkie in the air
glug like a navvie
we won't comment
we won't stare
slurp like a trouper
we won't be a party pooper
sip through your lips
or inhale for all we care.
just remember when you drink
take a while
to pause and think. ☕
Time seems to run slower on a Sunday. Like a small hangover. Where you move just that bit slower than you normally would. Or maybe Sunday's trying to keep the calm between two bickering siblings. Perhaps Saturday and Monday have fallen out. That's it - Sunday is the peace broker.
Wandering amongst the foothills of imagination I arrive at the base camp to Mount Ponder. My face reflected in its Pools of Wonder, I start to gently ascend. ☕
Outside,
A motorbike
Rudely interrupts
The silence before the
Doppler Effect
Drags it
Away.
Distance is no barrier to imagination, from the safety of an armchair, shoe leather is never worn out on its well-trodden roads; tea is the universal mode of travel for those who think while they drink, ponder while they wander and light up while they sup. ☕
Catching random, scattered thoughts in a butterfly net before releasing them safely back into the golden fields of imagination. ☕
I dreamt I finally found the mythical place where all the odd socks go. Now I've woken up I've forgotten where that is.
I'm consoling myself with the fact that Coleridge must have had similar dreams before he one day woke up and wrote 'Kubla Khan'.
Maybe.
I don't so much rise from bed these days as unfurl like a slow-blooming flower. ๐ฅ
We 'first-cuppers' should have a name or at least a collective noun. There are millions of us, every morning. ☕
The Sippers In Slippers?
A contentment of first-cuppers?
The Slurperites?
A ponderance of first-cuppers?
The Snug Glugs
Just a thought. ๐ค
Scientists agree that we have to practice something for 10,000 hours before we can call ourselves an expert in that field.
I am therefore an expert in the field of tea-drinking, even though I can't recall ever drinking tea in a field. ๐ค☕
It's Easter Sunday, lamb for dinner, all is silent save for my wall clock which gently taps its beat in metronomic reassurance, reminiscent of a quieter, bygone age.
I sit in my comfiest of armchairs and count my blessings, sip by sip and tick by tock. ☕
Not many people know that the humble cuppa was the world's first GPS system - Gulp, Pause and Sip. ☕
I'm constantly
̶r̶e̶w̶r̶i̶t̶i̶n̶g̶
editing
my day.
So far
̶l̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶i̶d̶
I've not much
To say.
This tea was grown on the far-off slopes of Pondering, in the shadows of Mount Contentment.
A gloomier, cloudier start than recently. I wonder if Tuesday forgot it was working today? It's turned up in a mood bringing overnight rain. Darkened slate tiles become obsidian rooftops. Is Tuesday sketching its feelings? I recommend a lighter pencil and more colour.
we covet our first cuppa, I slurpose,
we love it for the thoughts it will expose
we care about the time and place we sip
we journey far and wide from where we sit.
Scientists have discovered that the first ever 'first cup of tea' was formed milliseconds after the Big Bang, right around the time that pondering and musing were also said to be created. ☕
"Is this a cuppa I see before me?
Handle towards my hand
Come let me clutch thee." - first draft of Macbeth where Shakespeare decides he will not kill King Duncan and have a nice brew instead. ☕
I wake with the Night, just before the Light to see the horizon crowned with a ring of fire. The Light has been coronated to a dawn chorus of "The Night is dead, long live the Light!"
Well, not exactly, but it's best not to tell the birds it's merely a job share. Ruins the mood.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately nice tea-room decree -
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's first draft. ☕
We don't seek answers as we ponder over our first cuppa - it's enough that we like playing with the questions. ☕
One freshly-washed favourite tea mug shows faint signs of tannin stains on the inside.
Or maybe it's a mishmash of memories from past first cups that gathers to remind me? ☕
Most people wanted to be astronauts when they grew up, or footballers or ballet dancers (I knew one lad who wanted to be all 3)
I always wanted to be a tea taster. And here I am - tasting tea. Much more relaxing than pirouetting around Wembley in a spacesuit! ☕
The brain's a wonderful thing, billions of cells and neurons capable of millions of computations a second - yet all I can think of over this first cuppa is whether my good jeans have been washed or not. ๐ค๐ง ๐☕๐คฏ
The impermanence of the present meets the constance of the memory, and somewhere between the two do I sip. ☕
Time's the only book that's written by everyone you've ever met and everyone you'll ever meet. Some say the ending's unwritten. Some say there's an unreliable narrator at work. Me, I just enjoy the words at every turn of the page. Remember, even those minor characters matter.
Old-school AI, the Magic 8-Ball of brews, the soothsayer, where you'll find all the answers you'll ever need at the bottom of that first cup, particularly the answer to the question - 'Shall I have another cup?'
And my first ponder of the day - who gets our lost hour? It must have gone somewhere. Is it kept in a drawer for when the clocks go back again in the autumn? Has it gone Down Under to play with the Australians? It'll probably be down the back of our sofas. Most things are.
Adonis was the son of Kings,
And probably his sister.
He might have been good-looking
But he had six-finger blisters!
My first few ponders of the day...
How many sips in an average mug?
Will it rain today?
I think there's about 25.
Hmm. There's washing needs doing.
Maybe 30.
It can wait until tomorrow.
Will it rain tomorrow?
Nah. Probably 25.
Probably.
I wake to a weekend full of joy and promise,
But nothing rhymes with 'promise',
Well, maybe there's 'pumice'.
But that's not right for an early morning tweet.
Who really wants to read about the rubbing of feet? ๐ค๐ฆถ๐ฆถ
One single ponder
to start the day,
leads to two single ponders
I think I'll stay.
Two single ponders
now turns into three,
and this is the magic
of that first cup of tea.
"Of all the cups in all the world, this teabag had to stroll into mine." - what Humphrey Bogart said off set during the filming of Casablanca - probably. ☕
Light is both wave and a particle
I read it in an interesting article
I think that it means
It flows in Time's stream
But at night it just hides - which is farcical.
Today I think I'll ruminate, then cogitate, then ponder. Then it should be time for a second cup. ☕☕
TEARS ALONG THE DOTTED LINES
A young man races
Tears along the dotted lines
Of aspiration.
TEARS ALONG THE DOTTED LINE
A widower sobs
Tears along the dotted lines
Of separation.
My bedroom wall clock ticks
My bedroom wall clock tocks
And in between those two small sounds,
Well, that's where life takes stock.
Someone's smeared Vaseline on Sunday's filter and it's ready for its misty-eyed close-up. The rain has retreated, muttering to itself that we haven't seen the last of it. A bird hops across a wall as if it's spring operated - which it is, if you think carefully about it.
The gardens at Kerr Towers have burst into bloom. Nature's intricate weaving skills are on display. My Yellow Ladies reveal a Rorschach Test of rich red dots on a pale silken frame. All this effort to attract a bee for the briefest of encounters.
The rest of its time is ours.
Like all true friends, words are often not needed, merely their warm, reassuring presence.
First ponder of the day - do Australians stir their cuppa anticlockwise?
๐ค๐ฆ๐บ☕
Thursday desperately wants to be Friday - a much cooler day who personally knows the weekend! Thursday's so desperate to be Friday that it's sometimes heard to say "Not long 'til the weekend, eh?"
Friday thinks Thursday is silly.
Friday desperately wants to be Saturday...
Thursday's ponder; do you think those monkeys ever did finish getting that piano up the stairs?
I wake pre-dawn to a world of dark outlines. Trees and buildings in their simplest form. Light hesitating at the edges of semblance, as if it has just arrived from outer space (spoiler: it has just arrived from outer space) and doesn't quite know which bits it should colour in.
the anticipation of the first
the expectation of a second
the possibility of a third.
there's a lot more going into your first cup than just tea and boiling water. ☕
March - so much brighter than its older brother. It's rumoured they're thinking of having February tested. The sun rises with more confidence, clouds part with greater ease. In fact there are so few clouds this March it's thought February forgot to put the order in. Stupid boy.
I misunderstood the meaning of calligraphy at school and filled out a page of swear words.
Then I found out what cursive meant.
Happy flipping birthday, pancake
Greetings, and all that
I hope you get all that you want
And that you turn out flat.
I know you find the day exciting,
Fun and so appealing
But can I ask you very nicely
Come down from that
ceiling.
Scientists have finally cracked the DNA code of tea -
20% imagination
20% pondering
20% relaxation
20% satisfaction
5% magic
5% mystery
5% awe
5% ahhhhh
I'm on Substack a lot these days. Someone described it as social media for those who read whole books, which I found both funny & possibly true.
I came across this poem, The Two-Headed Calf, written by Laura Gilpin in 1977. I was moved by its simplicity and its power.
To many, Monday's arrival is as welcome as an overdue bill landing on the doormat. Another week at the coalface. Now that I'm no longer able to work due to ill health, I recall all the times I hated Mondays. But now I wish the postman would deliver just one final urgent reminder.
Sundays Light has an easier time than most. Reflecting off of fewer cars on the road and fewer people rushing around, it gets to choose where it settles. Once it's settled it's rarely disturbed. Sundays Noise takes heed and reverberations are kept to a minimum. Library Sunday.
February's finally left. How does the shortest month always feel like the longest? The party guest nobody remembers inviting. Always hogs the music. Always drinks your good booze.
But now March is here. Our spring cleaner. They'll tidy up the mess and they'll stick to water.
As a kid it used to be 2p into town. I remember it was the same price as my favourite snack, Snaps.
Snaps are now 49p a packet and the bus fare's a whopping £3!
I'm hoping the government will adopt my Snaps Economic Policy to further route out such egregious injustices. ✊
The last teabag in the house for two mugs of tea; performing CPR on the solitary teabag with a spoon, after first ensuring your wife's brew is to her exact colour match.
Kids - this is true romance. ☕❤️☕
some cups are savoured
some cups are glugged
some cups are flavoured
some cups are hugged
some cups are mugs
some cups are sipped
some cups are chugged
some cups are sipped
some cups will last
way after the thirst
some cups surpass
that cup's the first ☕
Time is a revolving door
In which we go round and round,
An ever-evolving tour
But we are, where we are, where we're found.
Dangerously close to second cup of tea time - I fear I've disturbed the tea-qulibrium. ☕☕
"All the world's a stage"
Says Jacques, he's quite Shakespearean.
"No, it's not" says Jacques,
As you like it, you contrarian.
Bad memories are like odd socks. We have no idea why we keep them. We have no idea why we don't throw them away. And they always turn up in the least expected places.
Thursday is so desperate to be cool, but unlike Friday it can't stand next to Saturday vicariously basking in the expectation of a weekend.
So it's plain old Thursday. Pension day, if you're old enough to remember. Blue-rinse Thursday. Flat-cap Thursday. You're still cool to me.
I learnt my first proper swear words watching my dad play grassroots football. The swear words a 6 year old shouldn't really know. I'd go home with the knowledge that my mum hadn't been part of my furtive glimpse into the adult world. Somehow I was now the keeper of its secrets.
My dreams were at the border
Then grabbed and bound and chained
It seems that sleep's been ordered
To Make Waking Great Again.
Is February a sad month? January has the kudos of post-cheer revelry & the excitement of a new year. March fully embraces springtime - blooming & birthing. What has February got? Well it has the snowdrop,its head hung in silent prayer. February isn't sad.
It's hope in miniature.
Bag, loose or instant?
Builders, Assam or Earl Grey?
Sugar, sweetener or none?
Milk or no milk?
Pot or not?
Mug or cup?
Sip or slurp?
Sit or stand?
Alone or not?
No wonder we relax with a brew (or is it a cuppa?)
The choices we have to make are so tiring. ☕
The first phrase tells a tale of a chef engrossed in his work.
The second phrase tells an altogether more grisly tale.
"The chef was consumed WITH his cookbook."
"The chef was consumed BY his cookbook."
Imaginations journey of a thousand miles starts with a single sip - Old Chinese proverb.
If the first cup of tea was a character in a Dickens novel it would have been called something like Mugwain Guzzle or Cupernica Swallow.
Time's finally retired and finds itself resident at The Retirement Home For Elemental Forces Of The Universe.
A nurse asks if its children ever visit.
"Now and Then" reveals Time.
"Ah that's nice, do you ever see the Future."
"I used to. Many years ago."
Monday's sup is fair of face
Tuesday's sip is full of grace
Wednesday's slurp is full of woe
Thursday's gulp has far to go
Friday's swill is loving and giving
Saturday's nip works hard for a living
But the swig that's born on Sabbath day
Well, it all goes down much the same way.
Monday - Some call Monday the parent of Tuesday, the grandparent of Wednesday, the great-grandparent of Thursday etc.
But by that logic, Monday is also the great-great-great-great-great grandparent of itself!
It's a grand argument, but it's a week argument.
Sunday arrives seeming somewhat smudged in grey cloud and broken mist. The first sketch of Sunday, the artist getting their eye in. The light behind the tops of windows refracts through the gloom into subdued crowns of yellow. The Unassuming Kings and Queens of the Early Risers.
Nothing is faster than the speed of light, so says science. Yet when I wake in the dark all I can hear is the comforting sound of the tick and then the tock of the bedroom wall clock. Time's beaten Light in the scamper to Sunday. Maybe science should take a look at my clock. ๐๐ก
the devil's in the detail
the tea is in the cup
just one final exhale
just one tiny sup...
A cold, damp February morning. The kind of cold and damp that seeps not just into bones but into memory. Long after summer is here, and the garden's turned from a muddy green to a riot of warm colours, we'll still shudder at February's echo, shrugging it off as a passing breeze.
To become an expert at anything they say you have to practice for over 10,000 hours, which is 416 days, well over a year - challenge accepted! ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
Winter's headlock. Cold and damp tighten like a wrestler's grip. But this wrestler is less Olympian and more Big Daddy. It's just a show. An illusion. Easy! Easy! Before Mick McManus can scream 'Not the face!' it'll be spring.
I prefer golden autumn mornings & giant haystacks.
Coffee's calmer, more sensible sibling, infused with wisdom rather than impulse - the one who didn't run away to join the circus.
I hold up my phone and stare at the screen
It says - "Face not recognized"
I thought - "That's quite mean."
I hold up my face to see my reflection
I say - "Face not recognized"
On closer inspection.
"Of all the kitchen's in all the world, you had to walk into mine." - from the first draft of Casablanca, where it was originally set in the UK and called Cirencester. ☕
Some days my mind is an open book
Words flow all day long at my leisure
Others, like Shakespeare's cookery book,
I have to read measure for measure.
"It was the best of times."
(slurps)
"It was still the best of times."
Charles Dickens - first draft of a Tale of Two Cities.
The wrist bone's connected to the hand bone
the hand bone's connected to the finger bone
the finger bone's connected to the bone china ☕
What if our real life and our dreams were two competing versions of ourselves vying for the upper hand?Who would we want to win?
The real life version, who is flawed, human and driven by a desire to improve?
Or the dreamlike version, who is always turning up naked to exams?
Beneath the rain, below the wind, between the frequent squalls.
Poor old Michael Fish must think,
No storms are here at all.
If your dreams just disappear
When all the sleeping stops
You'll find them all still playing
With all the lost odd socks.
I sit at the front of a conference of memories and listen to the future, the keynote speaker.
A feeling much like the one when your dad first lets go of the bike saddle and you're pedalling on your own, realising you can now go anywhere that you like.
Along the horizon a silvery band of light appears behind backlit clouds. The sun will soon rise. I hope Friday remembers its lines. The town resembles a roughly-drawn charcoal sketch. A first draft. A memory. As we wake we fill that sketch with living colour. Artists one and all.
Early stroll - to the kitchen. That teaspoon was sat by the sink last night. Won't its parents, presumably two tablespoons sat in the cutlery draw, be sick with worry? Love is... that Goldilocks muscle-memory honed from pouring just enough milk into your partner's tea cup.
The spellings to the start of each day always changes
They wear their own clothes which they choose
But the endings remain all the same and what's strange is
They all wear the same pair of shoes!
Blue coping stones on my garden wall have mined diamonds from the frosty air and are sparkling in the sun. It's so cold I feel I could break chunks off of my garden with a toffee hammer. The sun is weaker than a lost argument and my lawn smiles a rictus grin of peppermint green.
I'm up early when there's no guarantee of light. "Past performance is no promise of future results." We should read the small print on each day, not just assume it's arriving on time, or arriving at all.
Look what happened to those above the Arctic circle when they got sloppy!๐
The sky's boiler light is lit. An orange band fills the horizon, rising with the morning sun. It's a cold, hard frost this morning. The frost is so thick it can look like a light dusting of snow. The frost bells peal across the land, the sound of the scraping of car windscreens.
Our snow's all gone. The dazzling guest at the ball is no more. Shining for the briefest of times, leaving memories of sparkling white.
A clump of snow remains behind a corner of the garden wall where no sunlight reaches. It's hardly Cinderella's slipper. But proof it was here.
Northampton or Narnia? We're blanketed in the uniformity of snow. Oh, to build a snowman! Grab an old hat, carrot & some twigs, really go to town. But it's supposed to melt by noon.
I'm daydreaming, snowdrifting back to a time when fat, wobbly snowmen seemed to last for weeks.
Oh soggy bag of Tetley's
just lying in my sink,
How do you do the things you do?
How do you make me think?
How do you take a simple brew
And turn it into wonder?
Dive my wrecks of memory
For treasure you then plunder?
Frost has briefly stopped time. Fallen leaves are locked in an icy grip & the water in my bird bath has hardened to ice. Rooftops are whitewashed & my grass looks like it's going grey on top. I look for signs of life. But nothing moves. Then a bird hops onto a fence.
Waiting.
The air's crispier than a crisp that's just won Crisp Of The Year; fresher than fresh toothpaste fresh from the tube at the toothpaste factory. A vaporised speech bubble hangs above the silent man, vaping at the bus stop. If only I spoke Vape, I could surely read his mind.
Wednesday still has that fresh new year smell. The litter in the streets speaks of an inverted retelling of Hansel and Gretel. Where tipsy revellers leave party detritus and kebab boxes in their wake in order to find their way back to 2024. Alka Seltzer's stock price soars.
