Wednesday, 30 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

We've won the cup

we've won the cup

ee aye addio

we've all won this cup! ☕

Monday, 28 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. ☕

Sunday, 27 April 2025

SLOW TIME SUNDAYS

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. ☕

Saturday, 26 April 2025

DISTURBED SILENCE

Outside, 

A motorbike

Rudely interrupts 

The silence before the

Doppler Effect

Drags it

Away.



FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. ☕

Thursday, 24 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

A game of snakes and ladders, with all the snakes removed. ☕

Wednesday, 23 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Catching random, scattered thoughts in a butterfly net before releasing them safely back into the golden fields of imagination. ☕

STATELY PLEASURE DOMES FOR ODD SOCKS

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.

Tuesday, 22 April 2025

BLOOMING MORNINGS

I don't so much rise from bed these days as unfurl like a slow-blooming flower. 🥀

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. 🤔

Monday, 21 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. 🤔☕

Sunday, 20 April 2025

BLESSINGS

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. ☕

Saturday, 19 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

I've found the end of Imagination's rainbow, and it's sharing out its gold. ☕

DESSERT PRESENTED AS A TREATISE ON GLOBAL WARMING

Lack Forest Gateaux.

Friday, 18 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Not many people know that the humble cuppa was the world's first GPS system - Gulp, Pause and Sip. ☕

Wednesday, 16 April 2025

EDITING THE DAY

I'm constantly 

 ̶r̶e̶w̶r̶i̶t̶i̶n̶g̶

editing 

my day.


So far 

 ̶l̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶i̶d̶

I've not much 

To say.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

This tea was grown on the far-off slopes of Pondering, in the shadows of Mount Contentment.

Tuesday, 15 April 2025

MOODY TUESDAY

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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.

Monday, 14 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. ☕

Saturday, 12 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

"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. ☕

Friday, 11 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

April continues to shower me with sunshine. ☕

Thursday, 10 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Where pondering pools. ☕

Wednesday, 9 April 2025

CORONATED LIGHT

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately nice tea-room decree - 


Samuel Taylor Coleridge's first draft. ☕

Tuesday, 8 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

We don't seek answers as we ponder over our first cuppa - it's enough that we like playing with the questions. ☕

Monday, 7 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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? ☕

Sunday, 6 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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! ☕

Friday, 4 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

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. 🤔🧠👖☕🤯

Thursday, 3 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

The impermanence of the present meets the constance of the memory, and somewhere between the two do I sip. ☕

Wednesday, 2 April 2025

THE BOOK OF TIME

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.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Bobbing about on Lake Ponder.

Tuesday, 1 April 2025

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Who is April Fools and why does she have her own special day. 🤔☕