FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. ☕

STUPID BOY

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.

SCHOOL SWEAR WORDS

I misunderstood the meaning of calligraphy at school and filled out a page of swear words.

Then I found out what cursive meant.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Where pondering comes to keep fit.

AN ODE TO A PANCAKE ON PANCAKE DAY

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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

POETRY FINDS

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.

A FINAL REMINDER

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.

QUIET PLEASE!

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Sponsored by The Union Of Amalgamated Ponderers and Imagineers. ☕✊

THE SPRING CLEANER

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.

COURIERS

Morning's light has been left on the horizon. Even Mother Earth can't get decent couriers.

SNAPS DECISIONS

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. ✊

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. ☕❤️☕

TODAY'S SCRIPT

Wake Up

Improvise

(guests to be announced).

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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 ☕

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Cast afloat to drift awhile,

I'll just float and sift and smile.

REVOLVING DOORS

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Dangerously close to second cup of tea time - I fear I've disturbed the tea-qulibrium. ☕☕

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Ten out of ten, again and again.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Lipsynching with imagination.

AS YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

"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 OF ODD SOCKS

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Tiptoes through the two lips. 

BLUE-RINSE THURSDAY

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.

A FURTIVE GLIMPSE

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.

AT THE BORDER

My dreams were at the border

Then grabbed and bound and chained

It seems that sleep's been ordered 

To Make Waking Great Again.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

The silent conversationalist.

MINIATURE HOPE

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. ☕

WHY PREPOSITIONS MATTER

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."

POSTCARD TO UNREQUITED LOVE

I wish you were her. 

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Where wandering in imagination meets pondering and meditation.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Imaginations journey of a thousand miles starts with a single sip - Old Chinese proverb.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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 - A SHORT STORY

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."

FIRST CUP OF TEA

The universal translator for the imagination.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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.

WEEKLY ARGUMENT

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.

THE UNASSUMING

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.

TRAVELING AT THE SPEED OF TIME

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. 🕗💡

FIRST CUP OF TEA

"Out, damned pot!" - Lady Macbeth clearly preferring her teabag left in the cup.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

the devil's in the detail

the tea is in the cup

just one final exhale

just one tiny sup...

FEBRUARY'S ECHO

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Allowing the silt to settle for the day ahead.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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! ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕

FIRST CUP OF TEA

ESP - Extra Sensory Perfection. ☕

EASY! EASY!

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Today's song will be slurped in the chord of T major.

MINIATURE MEN

Miniature men from '79

We had miniature thoughts

But made giants of time.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Coffee's calmer, more sensible sibling, infused with wisdom rather than impulse - the one who didn't run away to join the circus.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Brewing up a calm.

LET DOWN

The inventor of the parachute succeeded by being let down gently.

FACE NOT RECOGNIZED

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

"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. ☕

SHAKESPEAREAN COOKERY

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

I'm back at the imagination station.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

The DNA of a happy day.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

"It was the best of times."

(slurps)

"It was still the best of times." 

Charles Dickens - first draft of a Tale of Two Cities.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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 ☕

NAKED AMBITION

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? 

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Taking up with an old friend as if you'd never been away. 

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE WEATHER FORECASTER

Beneath the rain, below the wind, between the frequent squalls.

Poor old Michael Fish must think,

No storms are here at all.

ODD SOCKS

If your dreams just disappear 

When all the sleeping stops

You'll find them all still playing 

With all the lost odd socks.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Interviewing imagination for the important job of Ponderer.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

I sit at the front of a conference of memories and listen to the future, the keynote speaker.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Taking me straight to the coalface of the imagination mine.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Stirring stuff.

FIRST DRAFT

"Last night I dreamt I went to Whitley Bay again." - Daphne du Maurier's first draft.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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.

ARTISTS

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Laying the underlay for the day ahead.

LOVE IS...

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Soul aerobics.

DRESSING THE DAYS

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!

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Filmed in TetleyColor.

RICTUS GRINS

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Gritting the pathways of imagination.

SLOPPY

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!😉

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Allowing the imagination to read between the lines.

THE PEALING OF THE FROST BELLS

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Lift-off.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

All the decs are down and I'm left with just my morning star. 

AUNT VI

Our Aunt Vi loved Roman Numerals.

We used to call her Aunty 6.

ONE SLIPPER

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.

NARNIA

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Much like every snowflake, each first cup of tea is unique.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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?

WAITING

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Allowing you to sort through the junk drawer of your mind.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Where the past meets the present to ponder the future.

SILENT SPEECH BUBBLES

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.

HANSEL AND GRETEL

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 Just 358 more supping days until Christmas.