Am I Weird?

From Noveltea.co.uk

A national newspaper once pilloried me for saving money, suggesting I was careful to the point of mean.  We never buy that paper and we never speak its name, so I can’t tell you which one it was.  When my poetry book is e-published and goes viral, doing for rhyme and form what Fifty Shades of Grey has done for mommy porn, I will refuse to allow it to be serialised in that particular paper.  So there!

The thrust of their argument was that I re-use teabags and therefore I am a heinous person.  They conned me into posing with used tea bags on my washing line, claiming it was ‘a light-hearted piece’.  And so it was, if by ‘light-hearted’ they meant, ‘vicious to the point of stabbing her in the heart with a teaspoon.’ But I’m not bitter, unlike that editor’s soul.

I do re-use tea bags.  I don’t hang them on the washing line.  Here’s how it works:

I drink milk, water, the occasional glass of wine or Dandelion & Burdock, and Earl Grey Tea.  I drink tea all day long.  I like tea; it’s refreshing.  I don’t do drugs, snue gliffing or alcohol to excess so, in the scheme of things, it’s not a dangerous addiction.  I’m not likely to mug a granny for the price of a china cup of char.  I don’t get high on bergamot & lemon fumes.  I refuse to apologise or stand up at the TA* and declare, ‘My name is Tilly.  I am a tea-drinker.’

* Tea-drinkers Anonymous; not the Territorial Army.  I’m hardly likely to wander into barracks and declare ‘I drink tea,’ am I?  Not if I’ve had my regular doses, anyway.

[276/365] DSC_1914 (Photo credit: knowinspiration)

We are on a minuscule budget and fifty Twinings Earl Grey Decaffeinated teabags cost around £3.59.  That’s more than seven pence a cup!  

I drink an average ten cups a day. Seventy pence a day x seven days a week x four weeks a month x thirteen months a year because four weeks x twelve months adds up to only forty-eight weeks and I’m not giving tea up for a day, never mind a whole imaginary month = £254.80.

I know I could use that money to go on holiday or buy gifts for my boys or pay my gas bill (it hasn’t stopped raining since last September; of course I’ve got my heating on in July), but I won’t.  And you can’t make me.

I drink decaff after noon and regular before noon, and the regular is a little cheaper; but if I drank regular Earl Grey all day I’d get no sleep and start writing daft posts about ordinary things, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?

I drink my Earl Grey black.  I drink ordinary tea with milk, not too weak, not too strong, no sugar, not too milky, just so you know when I visit you.  I’m easy to please, so long as you make it exactly how I like it.

Black Earl Grey is strong.  I don’t like strong tea; I’m not that northern.  Making my tea is a matter of pour, wiggle, remove.  Around a third of its natural strength.  That’s two-thirds of a tea bag unused.  In this – or any – economy, that’s a scandalous waste of money.  Would you throw away two thirds of the contents of your tea box?  Of course not.

Excuse the blurry photos – I’m useless before the third cup of tea.

This is what I do every morning when I get up:

• Put the kettle on (filling only to the required level; don’t waste energy, water and money by over-filling the kettle).
• Set out three cups – one wide; one large; one small.
• Make the first brew in the wide cup: pour, wiggle, remove.  It cools quickly, giving me an immediate fix.
• Put used bag in large cup.
• Make the second brew with breakfast – pour, wiggle-iggle, remove.  A large cup, to wash down the meal; not wide, or it would cool before I’ve finished eating and it has to be drunk at just the right temperature: not too hot, not too cold.
• Put used bag in small cup.
• Make the third brew around ten.  A small cup, because the tea is beginning to lose its strength.   Pour, leave to stand for a minute, double wiggle, squeeze, remove tea bag to food recycling box.

There’s nothing weird about that, is there?

Why don’t you visit me, and we’ll discuss it over a nice cup of tea?

*

(

I’m Three Mugs Of Tea Away From Becoming A Feminist.

A mug of tea (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today at ten a.m. I found myself waiting on the men of my family, carrying their morning brews up to each of them in bed.

The Hub had the worst night of his ME-life on Monday, so he gets a pass.  Tory Boy is home for a funeral and we haven’t seen him since Christmas, so he gets a pass.  Spud is using his Easter break to revise hard for his GCSEs, between hours spent playing football, PS3 and messing about in his room with his brother until two in the morning, so he gets a pass.

When do I get a pass?

Mother’s Day?  Unlikely.  I am always first awake.  On Mother’s Day I try to lie in bed, to allow my children to experience the joy of waiting hand and foot on another person, but my bladder has a mind of its own and, once it’s up, it wants to stay up.

I guess I’m a morning person, and they are not.  If men are from Mars, I’ve been to Venus and back before they even start to think about waking up.

Either that, or I’ve read the Twilight books too many times.  That Bella – the celibacy, I don’t have a problem with…but cooking?  Housework?  Voluntarily?  That’s not a normal teenager.  Or even a normal person.  Taking on all the household chores?  Somebody bring me a cup of tea; I need to lie down.

Joke 339

Three couples were having tea one day.  The conversation was somewhat desultory so one of the men, trying to get a laugh, said to his wife, “Pass the honey, honey!”  The others laughed.

A moment later, the second man said, “Pass the sugar, sugar!” This got a bigger laugh, so the third man decided to join in the fun.

He waited for the perfect opportunity, cleared his throat and then confidently said, “Pass the tea, bag!”

Put The Kettle On, America

Another reblog, I’m afraid.  It raises a question that was never answered to my satisfaction.  I have a few more readers now, more than half of you American, so perhaps the answer will be forthcoming this time.

Image via Wikipedia

This is something that has puzzled me for years: are there no electric kettles in the USA?

Watch American movies and tv carefully: whenever a cup of tea or coffee is made, the character fills a kettle and puts it on the stove.  No-one ever plugs a kettle into the wall.  Why is this?  Is there a ban on their use in the media, like there is for cigarettes?  Does the American Government know and is not telling us that electric kettles cause cancer? 

There is also the question of tea: why do Americans drink tea with the bag still in the cup?  I know this is so because the string and label always hang over the side on telly.  The tea must be stewed by the time they get to the bottom of the cup.  No wonder there are so many hairy people in the States.  And don’t get me started on how they drink it the minute the boiling water is poured in – do they all have asbestos lips? 

My own theory is that America has traditionally been a nation of coffee drinkers and directors want to show their characters’ individuality by making it obvious that they are tea drinkers: maverick detective with hirsute trout pout clears name by killing seventy-three queuing assailants with six bullets, and rounds off the day with a nice cup of Earl Grey. Or it could just be a matter of product placement.  But that still doesn’t explain the weird absence of electric kettles.

‘Queuing assailants’ came from a writing class, where we discussed the fact that there are no new stories, then segued into movie clichés: the baddies always take turns fighting the hero instead of rushing him en masse.  It’s usually a him.  He might have – in fact, he will have – a gorgeous female sidekick and she will have a fabulous name and these days can kick butt as well as him, but she will inevitably be captured and be reduced to ‘the girl’: Let the girl go/just give me the girl/blow up the Isle of Man or the girl gets it.  If I am ever captured and the Hub rescues me and I hear him say, ‘Let the girl go,’ the first thing I will do after my grateful smooch will be to kick his butt and leave him for a dentist.  It annoys me.

Then there is the matter of coffee drinkers: we see them in their homes, loading their stove-top kettles or their coffee machines.  Next scene: a cardboard cup of coffee in their hands, bought from Starbucks on the way to fight crime.  What’s that about?  Are the stove-top kettles decoys?  Or a subliminal message…if it ain’t from a street vendor you’re killing the planet?

One final question: do I spend too much time watching tv and worrying about inanities?

Related articles

• How can I find the perfect – green – kettle? (recyclethis.co.uk)
• Put the Kettle On: Keeping Warm from the Inside Out (apartmenttherapy.com)
• coffee vs tea vs ? (livingoverseasandlovingit.wordpress.com)

There Were Seven In The Bed And The Little One Said, ‘Stop Kicking Me And Give Me Some Covers, Will You?’

It feels like Christmas in South Africa in my house, bursting at the seams with people.  Just how I like it: I love a full house because it means people like me (or my offspring, in this case).  My niece and nephew arrived on Saturday and they bunked down in Spud’s room with him, as he has the largest bedroom and that’s how they all like it.  Spud finished school two weeks ago; the niece and nephew last week; Tory Boy is home from university; Tory Boy is in love and trading visits with Tory Girl and it was her turn to come here yesterday.  As far as the Hub and I are concerned another little one can be squeezed in no problem, but the house took the huff and refused to play along. 

Where to put everyone?  There are two couches downstairs so TB & TG could go on those but they felt they had been apart too long as it was (five whole days).  Two of the kids could go on them but they would have had to stay up late to use them.  TB & TG could go in our bed and the Hub and I go on the couches – yeah, right; like I’d give up my bed for anyone.  The couches were not an option.  TB & TG could stay in his tiny room if TG took the single bed and TB folded himself at right angles and slept like a Zed (‘Zee’ for my American friends) on the floor.  ZZZZZzzz…he wasn’t too keen on that idea for some reason.  TB & TG could take Spud’s three-quarter bed which is almost a double (they liked that one) and nephew sleep on floor of TB’s room on the airbed and niece sleep in the single bed.  No, niece on floor because she’s smallest and nephew in bed.  That left Spud who could sleep on the fold-out bed in our room.  Spud flat refused, preferring to slander his mother with scurrilous lies about her snoring proclivities and offering to sleep in the shed with the lawnmower and wallpaper stripper propping up the warped wallpaper table as a bed instead.  After briefly considering and discarding the bath for him, that left the Hub and I in our bed; TB & TG in Spud’s bed; Spud in TB’s bed because he is tallest of the three; and the nephew and niece on the floor in TB’s room.  Not as harsh as it sounds: with the door left open, we used the airbed and the mattress from the fold-out bed as a base; added four winter blankets; four winter and five summer duvets; seven pillows carefully placed to avoid bumps on the head from looming wardrobes and bookcases; and, as long as TB & TG were careful not to kick them in the heads sticking out into the upstairs hallway when they came out of Spud’s room – which they tend not to do for days on end except at feeding time – the nephew and niece slept like the princess after they removed the pea, not even noticing when Spud climbed over them with – and I quote – ‘a lot of ninja skills’ to get into Tory Boy’s bed, and accidentally flattened them.  Jolly japes!

I slept like a baby in my own bed but accidentally got up an hour early because I misread my watch.  When I came out of my room I saw that all the children were up but when I went downstairs it was just the nephew.  I went back upstairs to check on the other two and realised I wasn’t wearing my glasses and so hadn’t spotted Spud under his duvet and the niece buried like a gerbil in her nest on the floor.

*

I was surprised by a nice gesture yesterday: the Hub bought an airline pin from eBay; he has around seven thousand that he has accumulated over the years. 

The first 114 of seven thousand

He’s such a geek.  Him buying the pin wasn’t the nice gesture (I don’t want any of the seven thousand of them); it was the eBayer who sold it to him: he included a sachet containing an Earl Grey teabag and a bag of sugar, with a note explaining that he was encouraging the world to stop anytime for a nice cup of tea: ‘Tea-time, anytime can be just for make time for me-time too.  Pure Pleasure!‘  Isn’t that a lovely idea?

*

Yesterday was Three Word Wednesday and I thought I’d join in.  We are given three words as a prompt and they were: abuse-cramp-hatred.  I used a synonym for hatred because it reads better.

Advice For Catholic Boys

Self-abuse
leads to
cramp.  Then
it drops
off.  Self-
loathing follows.
You’re left
with a
phallic thimble.

*

A sex education
second-to-nun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

America, Please Enlighten Me

This is something that has puzzled me for years: are there no electric kettles in the USA?

Watch American movies and tv carefully: whenever a cup of tea or coffee is made, the character fills a kettle and puts it on the stove. No-one ever plugs a kettle into the wall. Why is this? I mention it because I was reading WendyUsuallyWanders this morning and she had an interesting virtual tour of her kitchen, and I noticed there was no kettle. I asked her the same question and she was a little helpful: she doesn’t drink tea or coffee herself but she has seen electric kettles in other homes. But that doesn’t tell me why they never appear on tv. Is there a ban on their use in the media, like there is for cigarettes? Does the American Government know and is not telling us that electric kettles cause lung cancer?

There is also the question of tea: why do Americans drink tea with the bag still in the cup? I know this is so because the string and label always hang over the side. The tea must be stewed by the time they get to the bottom of it. No wonder there are so many hairy people in the States. And don’t get me started on how they drink it the minute the boiling water is poured in – do they all have asbestos lips? My own theory is that America has traditionally been a nation of coffee drinkers and directors want to show their characters’ individuality by making it obvious that they are tea drinkers: maverick detective with hirsute trout pout clears name by killing seventy-three queuing assailants with six bullets, and rounds off the day with a nice cup of Earl Grey. Or it could just be a matter of product placement. But that still doesn’t explain the weird absence of electric kettles.

‘Queuing’ came from last night’s writing class, where we discussed the fact that there are no new stories, then segued into movie clichés: the baddies always take turns fighting the hero instead of rushing him en masse. It’s usually a him. He might have – in fact, he will have – a gorgeous female sidekick and she will have a fabulous name and these days can kick butt as well as him, but she will inevitably be captured and be reduced to ‘the girl’: ‘Let the girl go/just give me the girl/blow up the Isle of Man or the girl gets it.’ If I am ever captured and the Hub rescues me and I hear him say, ‘Let the girl go,’ the first thing I will do after my grateful smooch will be to kick his butt and leave him for a dentist. It annoys me.

Then there is the matter of coffee drinkers: we see them in their homes, loading their stove-top kettles or their coffee machines. Next scene: a cardboard cup of coffee in their hands, bought from Starbucks on the way to fight crime. What’s that about? Are the stove-top kettles decoys? Or a subliminal message…if it ain’t from a street vendor you’re killing the planet?

One final question: do I spend too much time watching tv and worrying about inanities?