tea – Page 4 – Deborah Makarios

September 30, 2016October 20, 2017

Moving House: the Worst Case Scenario

What is the worst thing that could happen when you move house? Turn your mind to this for a moment. The moving truck getting lost? Or getting broadsided by a Hummer and exploding in fragments of your best china? Or your new house being destroyed by a meteorite, leaving nothing but smoking ruins to welcome you on your arrival? No – the worst thing that can happen is what happened to us.

Imagine: it is the morning after the epic move (which went surprisingly smoothly, actually). You drag your exhausted self out of bed and down the stairs to the kitchen, where you clamber over the piles of boxes to reach those life-giving essentials which you have had the foresight to unpack first: the kettle and the tea.

Only to find (insert horror chord here) that the kettle has sprung a leak in the night, and will no longer hold water. There will be No Cup of Tea.

Let me just give that its proper emphasis: there will be NO CUP OF TEA!

As Macduff so aptly put it, “Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.” The kettle was broke ope and the life of the building stole forth, by which I mean the water for my tea. Dire news indeed.

I was forcibly reminded of the morning of the first Canterbury quake, when after a rude and violent awakening at half past four in the morning, we had to wait until dawn to check the chimney was sound before we could fire up the log-burner, put a pot of water on top and wait for it to slowly inch its way toward boiling. (Some log-burners these days are designed for use as stoves in electricity-less emergencies. This was not one of them.) It was just starting to steam when the power mercifully came back on.

While we waited, however, I got a message from a friend on the other side of town who had a camp stove and who was, she informed me, sipping a hot cuppa as she texted. I may have considered trekking across miles of fractured streets and fording the Heathcote and Avon rivers in order to murder her in what would have been cold blood but for all the exercise – but I refrained. That would only delay the point in time at which tea and I would converge. Because while I might slaughter a friend for an ill-considered text, I wouldn’t dream of then drinking their tea over their cold dead body. I have my standards.

Returning, however, to the present. We were saved in our hour of need by the kindness of family who had a kettle going spare, which we went and snaffled as soon as we decently could, viz: after getting dressed and eating something, so as not to faint from inanition. And then we returned, rejoicing, to luxuriate in that historic beverage: the first ever cup of tea in our own home.

Or at least, I did. The Caped Gooseberry, despite my best attempts to convert him, remains what Don Pedro would call “an obstinate heretic in despite of tea” (if he had thought of it, or met him, or, in fact, existed).

When was the worst time you ever got caught without a cuppa?

September 28, 2016

Armageddon Tea

As far as her mom was concerned, tea fixed everything. Have a cold? Have some tea. Broken bones? There’s a tea for that too. Somewhere in her mother’s pantry, Laurel suspected, was a box of tea that said, ‘In case of Armageddon, steep three to five minutes’.
from Illusions by Aprilynne Pike

July 22, 2016October 20, 2017

The Importance of Unwinding

You need it, I need it, we all need it. Something that will allow us to relax and let the string spool off the YoYo of Stress. If you don’t take the pressure off now and again, you go pop! like a weasel, and that isn’t good for anyone.

The key is to find the things that relax you, and make sure you make time for them. It sounds a bit self-indulgent, perhaps, but consider these words from the philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas. “It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.” In other words, lighten up a bit.

Seneca the Stoic agrees. “We must indulge the mind and from time to time allow it the leisure which is its food and strength.” His suggestions include going for a walk to get plenty of fresh air, going on a trip for a change of scene, or having “social meals and a more generous allowance of wine.” There you are, then. Be stoic: take a walk with friends to the nearest pub. Or consider the Cowper Cups that “cheer but not inebriate” – nothing like a nice cuppa when you put your feet up.

Jane Austen’s heroine Fanny, in Mansfield Park, says “to sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment.” Many others before and since have shared this view, although Mary Crawford (she of the flexible conscience), proclaims “I must move… Resting fatigues me.”

Others favour a creative pastime, or reading, or listening to music, or taking long hot baths. The poet Dylan Thomas claimed that “Poetry is not the most important thing in life… I’d much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.”

When the Caped Gooseberry and I were preparing to marry, we went through a thingy designed to bring to our awareness any issues that we might have in merging our lives. Forewarned, forearmed and all that sort of thing. The results suggested that we needed to work on finding ways to relax together, because we tend to find different things relaxing. (Other than that it was pretty much you’re weird, he’s weird, go for it.) I like to read and watch DVDs; he likes to think and play strategy games.

So we had to diversify our relaxment portfolios, and this was a good thing, because there is nothing worse (figuratively speaking) than finding yourself in a stressful situation and being unable to relax. Trust me on this. The Caped Gooseberry and I have been looking for a house to buy for some time (in fact, since just before the prices took off) and our efforts in that direction – with corresponding stress – suddenly increased three or four weeks ago. Just as I developed a pain in my wrist. What it was that was wrong with my wrist, I do not know, but I couldn’t knit with it.

I. Couldn’t. Knit.

I had always assumed that my MO in relaxing was curling up with a classic mystery, and I had not noticed how important knitting had become in the general scheme of relaxation. Had not noticed, until it suddenly disappeared for two weeks. (Twitch, twitch.) I would no doubt have fallen back on my old standby without thinking about it, had it not been for the fact that I boxed them all up back in March because I thought they were getting a bit too much of a hold on me.

Once I noticed the rising stress levels, however, I decided it would be all right to fish a few out to be going on with. Now my wrist has stopped doing whatever it was it was doing, I can knit again, and I feel much better. The question remains: will the mysteries stay out of the box, or go back in?

Well, the stress of house-hunting has died away. (In!)
Because we bought a house today, and that brings its own stresses. (Out!)
And we’ll be moving house soon. (In!)
But unlike the last time we moved house, I have no intention of packing away the stress-relievers first. Not all of them, anyway. I have at last learned my lesson: find what relaxes you, and stick to it.