Arctic Blasts

What I meant to talk about on Saturday was tea.

My coffee consumption has dwindled to a few lonely, slightly soggy grounds (I think I last had a cup on Thursday), and my tea ball is working over-time.  ngaio was kind enough to buy me a ‘sampler’ of lose-leaf teas which Evis and I have been testing over the past few weeks.  I have a table on my computer at work, wherein I have commented on the teas, and given them marks out of ten.  The marks range from eight to two (it tasted like broad beans...)  When it’s complete, I shall of course be posting it up here.

The fantastic news is that I’ve found a tea which scores an amazing, big, fat ten out of ten.  It’s called Arctic Fire, and I picked it up in London.  It’s almost sweet and floral, like Turkish Delight, but then it weighs in with a heavy kick of mint.

There’s only two problems:
I need an air-tight jar to keep it in, as it’s very quickly losing it’s bite;
I can’t find anywhere in the UK to buy it on-line!  The shop sealed the packets with stickers giving their street address and telephone number, so when I come back from Scotland I’m going to give them a call and ask if they can post me some.

I’ve got another two teas from the London shop as well:  One is a violet tea which Allegra brought and doesn’t really like; and the other is one called Chinese Hookah.  I’ve not tried the Hookah yet--I’m using up the Arctic Fire before it becomes tasteless, and have kept the Hookah sealed against degeneration.  The violet tea tastes like Palmer Violets, which can’t be a bad thing.  It’s a sweet tea that’s like eating a Mars Bar--a bit fun and indulgent.

Peppermint tea is quickly replacing coffee as my writing drink.  This is very significant.  It’s like changing operating systems.  I replaced smoking with coffee, and now I’m replacing coffee with peppermint tea.  I love mint teas.  I’ve even brought my own mint plant--called Bertie--so I can make fresh mint tea.  Only problem is that the slugs seem to quite like mint, too.

The London Adventure

London was a different world to me.  There was such a huge variety of people all doing their own thing.  Almost half of them were plugged into their phones, Nintendo DS, mp3 player...  The other half stared blankly into space, into books or at the person with them.  Everyone was going somewhere, and only worried about arriving. 

The thing which struck me most were the smells of London.  I’d start off at one end of a street with beer and cigarette smoke, and pass through grilled meat, perfume, cars, buses, spices and a whole host of other things I couldn’t identify.  And what is it that the Tube trains smell of?  There’s some grease around the edges of it, maybe some copper, something with hints of rubber and something sharp...  The Tube smells like the Tube. 

I spent my time on the trains and the streets like a kitten in a catnip patch.  I guess the locals can be as angry at me as I get with the tourists who amble down the Welsh roads at 20 m.p.h. while they stare stupidly at the mountains.


Castlevania and Crossbones

Out in Finchley, it smelt of rain and hedgerows.  We had a twenty minute walk to the arcade through tree-lined avenues and the occasional passing car, only to find that the machine was long-gone.  It was a shame, but Allegra took it very well.  We played on the Silent Hill shooter instead, pumping pound coins into the machine as Pyramid Head killed us.

That left the evening free to visit Crossbones.  It was a haunting experience.  The gates were tightly shut but covered in flowers, epitaphs, ribbons, candles and photographs that other people had left for the dead.  Ordinarily, I don’t think the dead can hear.  When they’re close, though, my conviction slips away.  Allegra and I borrowed a pair of ngaio’s nail scissors, (eventually) drew some blood with them and left it at the gates.  I don’t have an explanation for why I did that.


The Espresso Book Machine

Before we left, the EBM had me excited.  With the machine, a publisher no longer has to commit to huge print runs.  You can go into the shop, pick the book you want, have it printed and then leave with it.  I had the idea of shelves being stacked, not with books, but with flashcards showing the front and back covers, the bookshop resembling a Blockbuster more than a library.

My whole experience was terribly British.  I picked out the book I wanted before leaving, and had a map to the store.  I went in, Allegra found the machine and I waited patiently for someone to serve me.  Eventually, I hunted someone down who told me that the someone I needed was on their break, but she’d find him for me.  Ten minutes later, he came back from his break, checked the EBM library and told my assistant--who then told me--that they couldn’t print the book I wanted and did I want to order it instead.  Rather defeated the point, I thought.  I could do that at home.

And that’s what I left thinking.  I go to a bookshop to smell the books, hold them, flick through the pages and be snagged by the covers.  If I want a specific book... I go to Amazon, or eBay, or Play, or Google Shopping, or anywhere else on-line.  The only advantage the EBM seems to have over other print-on-demand is that you have to go to the store to pick up your book.  That's a real... um... pain in the arse?  I think the EBM is going to be an odd side-track on the evolution of publishing rather than the linotype I thought it was going to be.


Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum was great.  I secretly liked Museums when I was a kid.  Every display I walk past, I read and am fascinated by.  I slowly made my way through the human body exhibit, then the dinosaurs, then the natural world and then the restless Earth.  The human body exhibit hadn’t changed since I saw it in around 1992, when I thought Terminator 2 was the best thing in the world, ever.  I walked over the dinosaur skeletons and watched the arms of a iguanodon shake like it was still alive.  The natural world told me a bunch of stuff about global warming I knew already, and the restless Earth showed me how rocks are made and how the planet’s core is mainly iron. 

When we look out to the horizon, the Earth looks flat.  Time’s like that, I think.  Things seem static and set, but only because we’re too small to see the curvature of time’s arc.   Like Eratosthenes, we can prove time’s curve but we can’t observe it.  Maybe one day, we will be able to. 


The Ballet

The ballet was interesting.  The dancers twisted and contorted like creatures from Silent Hill.  I didn’t know humans could move like that without being possessed by forces of evil.  The dance itself explored the evolution of imagination, mathematics, relationships and the space they exist in as they touched each other.  Interesting, but I think I still prefer Giselle.

We were pushed for time, but needed to eat before the performance.  We found an Indian buffet, and I filled up a plate with food, ate it, polished of half of ngaio’s and left within ten minutes.  Yes, I am proud of myself.


Docklands and Doughnuts

On Sunday morning we sat on the Docklands Light Railway from Bank station to the train’s terminus, and then rode it back again.  I watched the houses, apartments, warehouses, gardens, office blocks and rivers go by my window.  I gawked at the Isle of Dogs as it jutted out of London like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.  This random mash of new developments, history and organic human cultural growth is what London has always been for me.  The HSBC building, stations with names like Heron’s Quay and Mudchute, an old abandoned boat lying in the low tide and covered in plants, rows of Victorian terraced houses with their satellite dishes and washing in the gardens, gaudy new apartment blocks full of city boy wankers and DKNYs...  The DLR ride was definitely a high-light.

Waiting in London Victoria for the train back, we visited the Krispy Kreme stall and picked up doughnuts for the office.  All in, I think we ended up buying five dozen, not counting the few single ones we brought.  The people who served us--Martin and Leena--were wonderful and gave us free tea and coffee.

And the rest...

The falafel place was indeed fantastic and well-worth seeking out.  Opposite it, ngaio found a shop selling specialist loose-leaf teas and coffee.  Yes, it was Heaven and of course I spent money I shouldn't.  The Bridge Cafe lost out to time, unfortunately.

Now I’m utterly skint, but very glad I went.

Eunuchs drink decaff

Let’s be honest:  decaff coffee is emasculating.  It’s drunk by thin, weedy people with nasal voices who drive G-Wiz’s and insist on speaking about a girl’s right to have pierced nipples for her twelfth birthday at the local P.T.A. meeting (it’s empowering).  They’re not new-age crystal waving hippies, though:  They work in offices, have granite work surfaces and still drink coffee, dammit!  They just think caffeine interferes with their chi... and their heart.  I may be a vegetarian, a card-carrying member of the CND and increasingly convinced that the Lib Dems are too right-wing, but there’s a line.  I spend my life terrified of crossing it.

Yes, I have gender roll issues.  I grew up in the eighties and nineties, which meant that when I was forming my (very important) ideas about gender identity, mainstream media was constantly telling me that every natural instinct I have is Bad and Wrong and solely responsible for every Evil of the World.  It’s lead to a man approaching thirty who feels the primal need to go out and kill wolverines with his bear hands, and then come home and cry his guilt into a cup of peppermint tea.  But I digress.

I like the taste of coffee and that’s why I drink it.  That’s why I have it so strong.  Does decaff taste the same?  Well, over the next few days my SO will be making my coffee for me.  She’ll be making cups of decaff, normal cups and cups which mix both.  She’s not going to tell me which cup is which. With a little luck, it will eliminate the bias I have against decaff and allow me to judge empirically.

Meanwhile, Evis has been generous enough to bring his Amazing Tea Stash in for shares.  I had a cup of Earl Grey just now.  It was quite nice.  Tasted a bit like tea (normal tea), with a slight aftertaste of pizza.  Tea is a whole world to itself, isn’t it?  I never realised.  Dare I venture into this brave new world?

From My Cold, Dead, Shaking Hand

I like to imagine my physical self as a sort of see-saw.  One side is labelled ‘health’, and the other ‘unhealth’.  On the health side, we have exercise, nutrition... all that boring stuff.  On the unhealth side, we have my vices.

Each of the things on the see-saw has a weight, and that combined with its distance from the fulcrum determines its affect on my physical self.

I used to have a lot of vices that sat a long way from the fulcrum.  These vices weren’t indulgences, but things which were a part of my lifestyle.  Whenever I sat down to write, I’d light a cigarette.  It got to the point when I was smoking in my breaks at work, when I was taking shopping in from the car, when I was laid up in bed and the room was spinning.  So, I quit.

When I was a student, I drank to excess.  After I graduated, I drank to be social.  For the last two years--apart of a very small sip when someone orders something interesting and some liquors around Christmas--I haven’t had any alcohol for almost two years.

And meat!  I don’t eat meat and haven’t for a year-and-a-half.  It’s harder than it sounds, because I can’t eat Wine Gums or Liquorice Allsorts or Pick-and-Mix any more.  I can’t have bacon sarnies or black pudding.

Those are three pretty big vices, and they sit a way from the fulcrum.  Now, I have a pretty sedentary lifestyle and exercise upsets me, but taking those three off the unhealth side surely more than balanced things out.  It left me with two vices (just two):  food; and coffee. 

Food loves me.  Food is always there for me, and never judges me.  Food makes me happy.

I take my coffee black.  I take it strong enough to stand a spoon up in.  Where as most people have their instant coffee ‘strong’ and ask for a full teaspoon, I’ll have two-and-a-half.  On an average day, I’ll have six of seven of these cups.  Whenever I write, I have a hot steaming cup of Jackson by my hand (as in Samuel L. Jackson:  Black; bitter; and quad-hard).

My heart’s been doing funny things, recently.  Walking across the room makes it beat so hard it feels like it’s about to burst out my chest.  Stairs are a problem.  Lying in bed sometimes feels like it’s going to be fatal...  Apparently, my heart can’t stand the shocking facts of grave robbers from outer space any more.

I was hoping I had angina.  Or a valve was faulty.  Or that maybe I needed a whole new heart altogether.  The doctor did some tests, took my blood pressure, booked me some blood tests and an ECG.

But you can see where this is going.   After all the medical niceties were out the way, ‘Cut down on the coffee’, she says.

Haven’t I done enough?!

Surely, surely the booze, the fags and the flesh balances things out.  Surely coffee is a light weight, close to the fulcrum.  A vice, sure, but a small and almost harmless one.  Right near the centre, keeping the pizza and cookies company (we know how easily they get lonely).

~sigh~

Yes, it’s a chance to embrace change and discover Brave New Worlds.

I don’t like change or Brave New Worlds.  I like routine and places I know.

Somewhat prophetically, the last time I saw her my mother said that she’d learned the dangers of drinking strong, black coffee, ‘too late’.  She has a liturgy of health problems and I was scared to ask which one the coffee was responsible for. 

But yes, I’ll do the right thing.  I’ll embrace this growth experience and discard yet another vice.  I’ll give up the coffee. 

Right after this cup.