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. ☕