We've won the cup
we've won the cup
ee aye addio
we've all won this cup! ☕
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.
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. 🤔
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. 🤔☕
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. 🤔🧠👖☕🤯
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.