Dec 3: Nearly Normal Again

We have to show you this Advent Calendar. It’s not the usual one.

First off, it’s delightful. And kudos to our pneumonia-raddled mother for surprising us with it; She showed up while we were still out at a social dance group and had to leave it. Not her fault; we weren’t clear enough about when we’d be home.

But the surprise kept going. We knew it wasn’t the usual David’s Tea calendar, but we sort of thought (and so did she!) it would be done up like an Advent Calendar. You know, doors you open, boxes that pull out…You’ll see looking at this that it does have a very clever tea schematic in terms of what tea you get on what day. You may also notice that all the tea is just sort of…hanging out in different quadrants of an admittedly charming box. Obviously what’s supposed to happen here is that you’re supposed to put them in those reusable Advent Calendars, you know the kind? Bags, boxes, blocks…We’ve seen at least one overpriced model by Indigo.

Full disclosure; Despite a 33-odd piece Nativity set, we do not actually own a reusable Advent Calendar, because we’ve never had cause to. We’re not about to start now. So, feel free to weigh in. We can either follow the very careful schematic on the card insert, or do a pick-and mix sort of thing while we play catch up. Thoughts? Opinions?

In the spirit of surprises, we set out to grab what we thought was a section of a much longer Wordsworth poem on the theme. Turns out it’s a sonnet. Never tell the women who taught us Romantics. In our defence, we hear the title and with think C S Lewis before Wordsworth. Actually, don’t tell the old Romantics tutors that, either!

Surprised by Joy
William Wordsworth
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

After all that we forgot the tea! It was Bigelow’s Spiced Chai today. We have to ration the Tetley Indulgence stuff at work, it’s such a hit, so we switch between the two. Supposedly Bigelow are some sort of family-run tea estate in North America. It might be Canada. Whatever they are, they’re hit-and-miss. Some of the teas are fine, but at least one was once described as “like drinking someone’s sweaty bathwater.”

The spiced chai is significantly nicer. Well, of course it is. You know us by now – we’re far too snobbish about tea to be drinking anything that isn’t nice, especially when slogging through verifications and press reports. It’s got a bit of cinnamon in it, and is the perfect thing to warm your hands in if you work in, oh, say, an icebox.

Which we do, by the way. It’s freezing. Look for poems about Siberia coming your way as soon as we open the metaphorical door of the very literal Advent Calendar tomorrow.

Dec. 24

We’re drinking a quick cup of Merry Breakfast blend before heading off for our Christmas Eve visit, so this is short and sweet today.

It’s a lovely tea – and exclusive to this Advent season. Inevitably. We’ll have to buy more before the year is over. There’s pomegranate in the tea, so it’s a bit sweet, but not overly so. Perfect for Christmas Eve.

We’re drinking it while the shortbread bakes as we pack up the Christmas cake and a grass cutting. We’re off to find out why.

But before we go, have the best Christmas poem going. It’s still our favourite.

The Oxen
Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

Happy Christmas from the Chorister at home, the Marschallin Cat and the Dachshunds of Dawlish. Don’t forget to take time in all the business to drink tea (our advice) and nap lots (the animals recommend it).

Dec. 23

We’ve just watched the most ludicrous Christmas Special in a long line of Christmas Specials. This is a time-honoured British classic of holiday viewing, and we’ve seen a variety over the years. There’s the traumatic All Creatures, where we thought Tricky Woo was dying. Dachshunds still aren’t speaking to us about that one.

There was the Maigret Christmas Special, which was bizarrely well-constructed. There’s a whole line of Dr. Who Christmas Specials that exist so that we can wail down the phone to our academic sister that ‘That didn’t make sense! It was great until I thought about it for five minutes and now I’m so confused, Erin!’

And there’s the obligatory Heartbeat Christmas Special, brought to you by Soppy Is Us.

But then. Then. Then they gave us the Sister Boniface Christmas Special.

Unless you’ve seen Sister Boniface, you probably aren’t aware of several things. It began as the unlikely spin-off to Fr. Brown. Except, unlike it’s parent show, it’s a comedy. There are March Hares less mad than this show, and the Christmas Special is the maddest of the bunch. In a move you couldn’t make up – except, you know, someone, somewhere did – it crosses the bottle plot of Murder on the Orient Express with the jewel theft of The Blue Carbuncle, the obligatory curse of – well, actually, let’s face it, about half a dozen bog-standard mystery plots – and the birth of a baby in an unlikely spot on Christmas Eve. Complete with wise men (well, some nuns) bearing gifts and a star (okay, an enhanced rail signal) guiding the nuns to the baby.

If you got all that, kudos to you. We just watched it and are thoroughly perplexed. There was a whole subplot where the Rev. Mother cancelled Christmas a la Oliver Cromwell, and another involving two extremely dotty old ladies trying to create The Best Christmas Ever.

This is probably why we capitulated and made a mug of Camomile Dreamland. How else are we supposed to unwind from that madness?

Actually, we’re hard on Sister Boniface, and it’s truly bonkers. Honest-to-God. But there’s also a great New Yorker article from years back about how it’s one of the best Catholic TV shows, simply because it recognizes that the nuns in it are people, as well as nuns. the eponymous Boniface has a PhD in science. Sister Peter loves the movies. Sister Lawrence loves to cook. They bicker and fight, and it gets a heck of a lot more right about religion than Fr Brown does. We haven’t once had to scream That’s not how confessional seals work at this show. So, you know, go watch it. But not without embracing the sheer insanity first.

Anyway, back to the tea. Camomile Dreamland is a rooibos-based tea, so we had hopes it would taste better than normal camomile. And it does. A low bar benefits everyone, right? On the other hand, it doesn’t really taste like much of anything, either. It’s been steeping away while we typed about the madness of some fictional nuns, and you’d think that would be enough time to taste of something, but…no. There’s a hint of something sweet in there, and we suspect rose petals. But the rooibos pretty much drowns out the taste of everything else, even the lemon.

On the other hand, we can’t taste the camomile, so that’s something.

So, what to pair with this tea? Have one about Mistletoe. Why? Blame Sr Boniface. It was pivotal to her scientific deductions. Also, we’re pretty sure this is saner. Hang on, what was it we said about that low bar…?

Mistletoe
Walter de la Mare

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen—and kissed me there.

Would you look at that. There’s not one stand-in crib scene. Not to worry, there’s another Christmas Special or ten round the corner…

Dec. 22

It’s half past five on the 22nd, and already we are so exhausted we could sleep for a week. We have yet to visit one relative, or hang a stocking, and there’s a whole day to go before Christmas Eve. But that’s it. We’re out. We have an appointment with a long winter’s nap. See you next year.

Assuming we don’t, in fact, wander off to sleep to rival the Marschallin Cat and the Buffy Dachshund, it will be purely because we subsist on tea and holiday baking.

Today it was a green tea, Korean Sejak, that per weird calendar tradition, still lacked capital letters despite featuring a proper noun in the title. It’s a nutty green tea, and it almost had enough caffeine to revive us after driving back and forth to the thriving metropolis of Guelph, Ontario.

(Guelph is not, for those outsider-readers, the alien Dr Who forgot to feature, much as it really should be. It’s a little town in the middle-of-nowhere, Ontario, and when we lived in St Andrews, we met the one other Canadian to know where this place was. He ran student support, and he was a local legend. Malcolm is now one of the Seven Wonders of Guelph. Also on that list; The Floral Clock and The Speed River, which is one of the best misnomers going.)

For most people, driving there-and-back-again is enough for one day, but no. We had to put the marzipan on the Christmas cake, and we had to wrap the gifts, because our family is doing a pre-emptive Christmas Eve tomorrow. This means tomorrow doesn’t exist and somehow our two-day holiday has ballooned into a three-day one.

Query for the universe; Why, knowing all that would be the case, would you stick us with the lurgy to end all lurgies the week of an Advent IV-Christmas Eve hybrid?! Whose clever idea was that, and who did we offend? Asking, so that going forward, we do everything in our power to never offend them the same way ever again.

On the plus side…We can almost breathe through our nose again. Almost. The hacking cough is still around, too. But, you know what? We’re at the stage where we’ll take almost breathing through our nose. Let’s call that a win.

All to say, you’re getting the last of our stockpiled poems tonight. Fair warning; This one famously traumatized a whole generation of Australian English students. The thing is, we sincerely like it. And Advent is supposed to be a penitential season. So…enjoy?

And A Good Friday Was Had By All
Bruce Dawe

You men there, keep those women back
and God Almighty he laid down
on the crossed timber and old Silenus
my offsider looked at me as if to say
nice work for soldiers, your mind’s not your own
once you sign that dotted line Ave Caesar
and all that malarkey Imperator Rex
well this Nazarene
didn’t make it any easier
really-not like the ones
who kick up a fuss so you can
do your block and take it out on them
Silenus
held the spikes steady and I let fly
with the sledge-hammer, not looking
on the downswing trying hard not to hear
over the women’s wailing the bones give way
the iron shocking the dumb wood.

Orders is orders, I said after it was over
nothing personal you understand -we had a
drill-sergeant once thought he was God but he wasn’t
a patch on you

then we hauled on the ropes
and he rose in the hot air
like a diver just leaving the springboard, arms spread
so it seemed
over the whole damned creation
over the big men who must have had it in for him
and the curious ones who’ll watch anything if it’s free
with only the usual women caring anywhere
and a blind man in tears.

Tell you what, we’ll try and spend what’s left of our thoroughly residual brain power sourcing something happier for the penultimate day of Advent. Over a cup of really strong tea, ideally.

Dec. 21

We’re having an extremely tentative cup of today’s Mint Everest. It’s a black tea with mint, and we like mint fine, but black tea and cramps are sort of an oil and water combination. Since we finally got them to quiet down and leave us alone a couple of hours ago, we don’t really feel like inviting them back with a highly caffeinated tea.

So, we aren’t really experts on how this should taste. We gave it approximately thirty seconds to steep and really hope that wasn’t too long. So far, though, it mostly tastes of mint. There’s cardamom seeds in there, and ginger, and apparently black tea. We can’t taste any of that.

Honestly, it tastes more like Christmas tree under the peppermint, which isn’t the weirdest thing we could say, because we’re pretty sure there were pine needles in the leaves we decanted into our mug. So, it’s all very Christmassy. And only for the people out there who enjoy mint.

But keep in mind, it might improve with a longer steep time. We’ll come back to it tomorrow or Saturday and report back.

We’re writing this all out while waiting for the nth pot of soup to boil. We are officially sick of soup. On the other hand, it was nice of family to stockpile it, and this time it’s not out of a tin.

But, even so. Lewis Carroll, though, proving there’s a poem for everything, doesn’t agree.

Beautiful Soup
Lewis Carroll

BEAUTIFUL Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!
Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!
Soo- oop of the e- e- evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
Pennyworth only of Beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!
Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!
Soo- oop of the e- e- evening,
Beautiful, beauti- FUL SOUP!

Dec. 20

Retrospectively, we should have known it was too good to be true when we woke up feeling more or less okay, bar some congestion.

Turns out the Terrible Lurgy Of Doom only let us off the hook to ease us into slow and agonising cramps. Question for anyone to have a go at; Who do we contact to demand a refund with interest on this last week? We want to know.

The calendar tried to compensate with a gorgeous silk dragon jasmine. That’s expensive stuff – the kind of green tea we dream of but don’t buy because freelancing doesn’t pay that kind of dividends.

Mind you, because we spent more of today in the bath than not, we only sampled a little. It lives up to its name though; it’s beautifully smooth. Here’s to drinking it when we feel human.

Want to start bets on when that is?

Sick Room
Billy Collins

Every time Canaletto painted Venice
he painted her from a different angle,

sometimes from points of view
he must have imagined,

for there is no place in the city
he could have stood to observe such scenes.

How ingenious of him to visualize
a dome or canal from any point in space.

How passionate he was
to delineate Venice from perspectives

that required him to mount the air
and levitate there with his floating brush.

But I have been sick in this bed
for over sixty hours,

and I am not Canaletto,
and this airless little room,

with its broken ceiling fan
and its monstrous wallpaper, is not Venice.

Dec. 19

This has sort of segued into Bunker Reports From an Invalid Under the Duvet, lately. Apologies.

The thing is, it’s difficult to focus on stuff that isn’t the Dread Lurgy when you go to bed at 9:30 PM…and lie awake until midnight. Whereat, by the way, we got up and made camomile tea. This time it was bloody awful, which either meant we were getting better or itwas deteriorating with age. Then we went back to bed and still didn’t sleep, so in despair we got up and took Tylenol, which we haven’t trusted since it did terrible things to a relative, and eventually drifted off to light and imperfect sleep full of weird dreams.

But it’s not all doom and gloom over here. The cat was very solicitous. She did her best burrowing under the duvet and cozied up to our spine, with much purring. This was probably a last resort since a musle cramp prevented us from being comfortable with her on our knees and sitting on our chest induced hacking and wheezing. She took that Very Personally.

Also today, two packages arrived from friends. One, in Germany, featuring a pattern for quilted pillows (or whatever you call things are that are bigger than pillows but go on the bed) that we’ll tackle when our brain clears. It features Dachshunds, because of course it does, and looks delightful.

Serendipitously, the other offering was full of tea and one of those mugs with a built-in strainer. One of the teas was even heavily ginger-infused. Just what we ordered.

Actually, ginger was the them of the day, because the Advent Calendar produced a ginger chai. It’s a good tea, but drinking it alongside tasteless soup didn’t improve it. Also, it’s better without sugar. We added some experimentally, and it’s definitely better unsweetened. We didn’t even go near milk, because who does when congested? But we can’t see ginger and milk working together, so we may not do that.

All this to say, it felt good to remember there was a world outside the duvet. One where we quilted stuff and met people for tea, and danced Scottish. Friends – who’d be without them, eh?

On which note, have a poem.

In the Company of Women
Gill O’Neil

Make me laugh over coffee,
make it a double, make it frothy
so it seethes in our delight.
Make my cup overflow
with your small happiness.
I want to hoot and snort and cackle and chuckle.
Let your laughter fill me like a bell.
Let me listen to your ringing and singing
as Billie Holiday croons above our heads.
Sorry, the blues are nowhere to be found.
Not tonight. Not here.
No makeup. No tears.
Only contours. Only curves.
Each sip takes back a pound,
each dry-roasted swirl takes our soul.
Can I have a refill, just one more?
Let the bitterness sink to the bottom of our lives.
Let us take this joy to go.

Dec. 15

The big news – the thing we have you in suspenders about, we are certain – is whether we got to the end of the book in time for book club.

We did. We may or may not have read the last 5% on our commute to the restaurant, but we absolutely showed up with the book read. And it’s good.

If you want a fun, fast, uplift read, go buy Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard. It reminded us of another favourite read, also with this book club, Little Ray Of Sunshine. Both are nominally romantic comedies where the focus is pretty squarely on the mother-daughter relationship and how we approach love. By that we mean all kinds of love – think C. S. Lewis Four Lovesian approach, here.

Books are good, is what we’re saying. Stories are powerful. Here’s a poem that wants to remind you of that. We picked it while unwinding with Moroccan Mint Tea. You should really drink this tea cold, but it’s December. Cut us some slack.

Besides, who ever curled up with a favourite book and…a cold cup of tea?!

I Met A Dragon Face to Face
Jack Prelutsky

I met a dragon face to face
the year when I was ten,
I took a trip to outer space,
I braved a pirate’s den,
I wrestled with a wicked troll,
and fought a great white shark,
I trailed a rabbit down a hole,
I hunted for a snark.

I stowed aboard a submarine,
I opened magic doors,
I traveled in a time machine,
and searched for dinosaurs,
I climbed atop a giant’s head,
I found a pot of gold,
I did all this in books I read
when I was ten years old.

Dec. 14

We’re trying to get ahead today, so of course the bloody blog is playing up. Actually, it’s doing this because we said the laptop (13 years old) was still nice and reliable and didn’t need replacing. Look, 99.99999% of the time, it doesn’t. Except when we use Chrome.

When do we use Chrome? To write everyone’s favourite tea-and-poetry blog.

But why, says you. Why not use a functional browser?

Ah, friends, so said we. Our normal browser is Firefox. But the thing about operating a 13-year-old computer, is that after a certain point it refuses to run new software. So, we’re stuck on an antiquated model of firefox, not that you’d know it, because it runs at a perfectly good speed.

But Chrome…Chrome wants to see if it can be outpaced by a snail. Or maybe a tortoise. We told it that was silly because the tortoise won the race, but….Since when does technology listen? We regularly tell the Google Home to stop babbling and it keeps right on going.

Anyway, all this started because (don’t tell!) we’re trying to get ahead on the book club book that we should really have read last week so we can discuss it tomorrow. But then family dropped in for a visit, and stuff happened, and the computer won’t go at speed, and now it’s twenty minutes until a singing lesson and our kindle still says six hours, eight minutes to go. Totally doable, right? We’ll just wake up at six, skip breakfast and get stuck in…

It’s a really good book, by the way. So’s today’s tea, which is black, inspired by Capri, and called Southern Lemon. We think it’s supposed to taste of lemons, but it doesn’t, hugely. Which…if you’re the type that flavours Earl Grey with lemon because of theological and/or personal objections to milk in Earl Grey, probably makes sense.

It’s really good tea. We want more of it. It’s perfect for waking you up, if, say, you are racing the clock to read most of a book before a singing lesson and a Scottish Country Dance session and are failing miserably.

And now that we’ve got the computer more or less functional, we’ve almost finished the bloog. We should give you a celebratory poem about technology to mark the occasion, but that seems sort of soulless. Have this poem about really good books, instead.

Good Books
Edgar Guest

Good books are friendly things to own.
If you are busy they will wait.
They will not call you on the phone
Or wake you if the hour is late.
They stand together row by row,
Upon the low shelf or the high.
But if you’re lonesome this you know:
You have a friend or two nearby.

The fellowship of books is real.
They’re never noisy when you’re still.
They won’t disturb you at your meal.
They’ll comfort you when you are ill.
The lonesome hours they’ll always share.
When slighted they will not complain.
And though for them you’ve ceased to care
Your constant friends they’ll still remain.

Good books your faults will never see
Or tell about them round the town.
If you would have their company
You merely have to take them down.
They’ll help you pass the time away,
They’ll counsel give if that you need.
He has true friends for night and day
Who has a few good books to read.

Dec. 13

Today’s tea was a Jade Tieguanyin Oolong. It’s a lovely, creamy oolong. But again – and we say this every other day lately – you have to watch the steeping time religiously. We could tell it was strong from the smell, so only used a pinch, and after last night’s disastrous ms-timing, poured out early. The result was a gorgeous oolong. But we could see how if you left it much longer, it could be bitter.

Today’s been full of family stuff. Can I skip Christmas Mass (no). Cost of train tickets on Boxing Day (don’t look!), and a surprise saga involving family ashes that is so convoluted we couldn’t make it up if we wanted to. It has all the constituent parts of a best-selling novel, except no one would think it was plausible. We’d go into it, but figure family would object.

Instead, have a poem about families. Who’d have them, eh?

This Be The Verse
Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

We first encountered this poem in A Series of Unfortunate Events, where the villain quotes it. In retrospect, that whole last book is built around the third stanza. Crucial, because this being a kids’ series (albeit an absurdist, gothic, often dark-ish one), the publisher couldn’t print the first two verses, because of the swearing!