In the ongoing saga that is our battle against the parcels of Advent tea, we experimented with a different tea infuser tonight. Whereas our usual is large and bell-shaped, this one is small, squat and house-shaped, what the giver dubbed our ‘tea grotto.’ This makes no difference, if you were wondering, to the elaborate procedure of tea leaf extraction from vacuum-packed plastic bags. We have, however, extracted a considerable number of tea leaves from the rug. Packaging 4: Us nil.
It was another apple tea tonight, appropriately dubbed Apple Cider. It’s supposed to taste like the drink – the wintery, non-alcoholic one. It does too, alternately sweet and tart by turns, depending on the length of steeping. It’s also a herbal tea though, and to our mind is fractionally too sweet. We blame the combination of apple and blackcurrant for a base. Overtop a green tea it would be perfect; as it is, the cinnamon and vanilla don’t quite balance out the fruit.
It also sports that most disturbing of things, cream essence. That’s not really a point against it; we’ve seen cream essence in enough teas by now to accept it as mundane. But we would someday like an explanation as to what it is. Is it manufactured? Powdered? Does one wave the prepackaged tea in front of a creamer? The tea proper doesn’t taste creamy and it also doesn’t smell of it, evidenced by the Marschallin-cat’s utter disdain for it. Miss Marschallin, to the uninitiated, has a sixth sense for all things milky.
We were going to segue from tea to the virtues of the Marschallin-cat, but it’s late, and she’s quite well-documented here. Less well-documented though is her origin as an Edinburgh cat. She came to us from Lothian Cat Rescue, where the felines are undaunted by quarter hours, flatten others’ scorn under the chariot wheels of their superiority, and, are, of course, in their prime. Certainly the Marschallin-cat is. Accordingly, here’s a hymn to Miss Marschallin. Well, to an Edinburgh cat, name unspecified. But don’t let on, will you?
An Edinburgh Cat
M.L. Dalgleish
There are cats in the Canongate and cats in the Cowgate
Up ad down Lawnmarket and right round St Giles;
Urban cats in Trinity and rural cats at Howgate,
Toms and tabbies purr and prowl for miles and miles and miles.
But not a single cat of them, claims where I wait
High in Ramsay Garden, clinging to the tiles.
From there I peer at Edinburgh with eager eyed felinity.
Traffic and humanity, at work and sleep and play,
From West end to Waverly, from Sun. to Saturday;
All the chase and chatter of the city’s femininity
On bargain hunt at Jenners and Binns, and C.&A.
Storm clouds over Fife, in the Firth the white spray curling;
Loud with the north easter, I shriek a merry mew;
Summer time in Princes Street; kilted dancers whirling
Where the flowery gardens hear my purring all night thro’,
Bagpipers on the Esplanade, and high above their skirling
I sing in shrill cacophony my joy at the Tattoo.
Grey friars Bobby sits smug beside his Candlemakers
A burgess and a movie star grown pompous by renown;
The unicorn of Mercat Cross mounts guard on holy acres,
Law-abiding citizens who view me with a frown;
Yet if I ever fall victim to town planners and house-breakers,
My loss would be catastrophe for Edinburgh-town.
*We can’t go without observing that while we lived many years in Scotland, we never once met a cat that joyed in the Edinburgh tattoo. Come to that we’re not sure we met non-tourists who joyed in it. But if you have, do get in touch!
Chorister at Home 