We broke into the Santa’s Secret tea this morning. It’s not worlds apart from Candy Cane Crunch except it’s less sweet and for whatever reason, the candy cane pieces don’t coat everything in residue. As predicted, we enjoyed it as much as always. It was definitely worth the wait.

Now we’re drinking Alpine Punch, another David’s Tea offering that is one of our winter staples. It’s a rooibos with lots of warmth and spice. It tastes of winter days to us, and of cool Scottish autumns too, because that’s when we used to drink most of it.

We first found it trying to replace the then-discontinued Apple Crumble Tea and the two aren’t that alike, except that Alpine Punch has apple somewhere in the ingredients jumble. But it’s also got almonds, which give it a significantly different sweetness to Apple Crumble Tea. And the rooibos base means there’s more spice than crumble tea’s green tea base. It’s also much harder to over-steep.

But it tastes warm, and after an afternoon of last-minute errands out in the cold, it’s perfect.

We’re still playing tea catch-up with the calendar. Yesterday threw us off by a day. So, there’s a lovely black tea/rooibos blend waiting for us at breakfast, and we’ll try and write about that tomorrow. But at least tomorrow’s poem is predetermined.

Oh, go on. Everyone knows what’s behind door 24 at this point. We delude ourselves you’d be dismayed if we changed now. And honestly, we’re far too Anglican to do anything that exotic. But day 23 is flexible. So, here’s more Larkin for you to keep you guessing one more day.

First Sight
Phillip Larkin

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth’s immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

Turns out he can be optimistic. Who knew? No, we’ve always had a soft spot for Larkin, and was one of our staples back when Poetry and Cake met live. They had an odd allergy to the really old stuff, and this was a good compromise.

Two lovely teas today. The first was an East Friesen black tea, and we had that as per custom with milk and a bit of cracking sugar over breakfast. We drank it while trying to parse tomorrow’s Advent Calendar door. (They aren’t marked and there are all sorts of puzzles to work out where you go next. We aren’t terrible clever about it, but it’s fun.)

Later we made David’s Tea’s Hazelnut chocolate. We put a bit of milk in the first half-cup, because sometimes black tea with chocolate tastes better that way. But this isn’t one of those teas. The milk mutes the hazelnut flavour and even some of the chocolate. Drunk black, it’s a much richer, complex black tea. We enjoyed it lots.

We can’t say we’ve always loved teas with chocolate, but over the years we’ve come round, especially for ones this nice. And on that theme, here’s a poem by G. K. Chesterton.

The Convert
G. K. Chesterton

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Incidentally, we always used to say that if we were going to convert anyone to our particular brand of High Anglicanism we’d do it with cups of tea. It seems much more civilized than trying to explain scripture with minimum qualification. And anyway, tea is the eighth sacrament.

But mostly we thought that bit of optimism about right for the shortest day of the year. See you tomorrow, when the days will be drawing out again. Not that we’ll notice.

We got through today powered by the German Advent Calendar’s tea, which we think is called Milchreis or Rice Pudding.

It was a lovely, creamy black tea that we suspect came from the same place as Bee Hoppy. The leaves have a distinctive texture and some of the flavours seemed similar. Either way, we were grateful for it. Turning out 3000 words across multiple articles takes effort.

When it was all tapped out and the dachshunds had had their walk (reluctantly, they’re still lobbying for that sleep-in until we bring the sun back) we made David’s Tea’s offering of Sleigh Ride.

Sleigh Ride is always billed as the inheritor of Crumble Tea. But this year the Crumble Tea was back, so we could properly taste-test for comparison, and they’re nothing alike. For one thing, Sleigh Ride is herbal. This isn’t a criticism, but one of the things that keeps Crumble Tea balanced is the tannins in the green tea. It can go quite bitter past the five minute mark but if you remove the strainer in time it’s a lovely cup.

Sleigh Ride has no green tea, so it gets sweeter and sweeter the longer it sits. Curiously, there’s supposed to be cinnamon in there but we never taste it over the hibiscus and beetroot. And as you’d imagine, that combination turns it spectacularly pink.

One thing we did notice the website suggesting was that you drink Sleigh Ride with honey. We would never have thought to do this because we aren’t in the habit of sweetening tea, but we can see how that might help with the taste and texture, which veers in both cases towards Overwhelmingly Pink.

That said, Sleigh Ride is a lovely herbal tea. It’s excellent for unwinding after long days working, especially if you want to let your brain switch off. By four o’clock this afternoon, that was us.

Funnily enough, one of the things we got writing about was poets and authors. As we compiled our lists, we stumbled over some that were new and a few old ones we’d forgot. Here’s a Langston Hughes poem from today’s writing exercise that we confess we’d forgot was on our radar.

Harlem
Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?
      Or fester like a sore—
      And then run?
      Does it stink like rotten meat?
      Or crust and sugar over—
      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags
      like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

One of the things the research we waded through was quick to point out was how refreshingly understandable Hughes was compared to poets like Eliot, whose poetry needed footnotes. And while there’s Eliot out there we enjoy, we’re also unconvinced his footnotes add much in the way of clarity.

We’ll stick with Hughes. We’re not convinced being dense and abstruse is a virtue.

We’re behind on the two-calendar system today. We’ve been running around non-stop since the morning. It was Advent IV, so we had church at 11, and that took a decent chunk of time. We can’t seem to remember how long the commute takes now we’re attending in person again, and keep showing up half an hour before the service starts. Mind you, it does mean we get our pick of pews in the days of partial capacity.

We got home in time to gobble lunch before disappearing to The Messiah. It was the last performance and we were lucky to go. It was the most condensed Messiah we’ve ever seen, but there’s still a bit of a thrill that comes with live music. We’ve missed it.

Despite the shortened run time we weren’t home again until five, and then everyone was so exhausted we had plain Yorkshire tea. So, now we’re having Caramel Shortbread from David’s Tea, and while we have what promises to be a lovely rooibos also waiting, having two tea samples consecutively at nigh on eleven at night is a bit much, even for us.

Caramel Shortbread is an old favourite. We never stock up on it, because we don’t drink enough herbal tea to justify the purchase, but we’re always delighted to see it in a David’s Tea calendar. Millionaire’s Shortbread, the thing this purports to imitate is one of our favourite sweets, and we’ve got to tell you, the tea does a pretty good impression.

The website encourages you to pair it with biscuits but it’s sweet enough on it’s own, we think. A combination of apple, brown sugar, and stevia. The last is almost certainly unnecessary, but as we say, we’ve liked this tea for years, we’re not going to start telling anyone to muck with the formula.

The brown sugar gives it a lovely caramel sweetness, and the fruits give it enough sharpness to balance it out.

All told, it’s a lovely, sweet way to end the day. We’ll get to that rooibos tomorrow, and the other teas too. We always need generous quantities of tea on workdays.

But first, a poem about music.

Ghost Music
Robert Graves

Gloomy and bare the organ-loft,
Bent-backed and blind the organist.
From rafters looming shadowy,
From the pipes’ tuneful company,
Drifted together drowsily,
Innumerable, formless, dim,
The ghosts of long-dead melodies,
Of anthems, stately, thunderous,
Of Kyries shrill and tremulous:
In melancholy drowsy-sweet
They huddled there in harmony.
Like bats at noontide rafter-hung.

We love this image. Whether you’ve sung from a choir-loft or not, it beautifully captures the feeling of stepping into a well-sung choir stall. It’s especially true of the Advent Prose, which makes it perfect for today, because Advent IV is always when our church features that anthem.

They’re wrong, by the way. You should sing the Advent Prose at the beginning of Advent. We were trained that way as a chorister and whatever you first learn is always right. But seriously, the Advent Prose pairs exquisitely with the Great Litany as a penitential rite. The only reason you wouldn’t put them together is if you wanted to get to the sermon the right side of lunch, and you can still do that if you cut out the sermon 😉

And if you have no idea what we’re wittering on about, have a listen. As Advent music goes, this is hard to outclass.

Well, we’ll see how this goes. Currently the other human in the house is watching Morse and the streaming of it is mucking the internet about. It took 15 minutes and ten percent of the battery from The Little Laptop That Could to get here. Not how we want to spend Saturday evening.

But anyway, we’re here. And we have two lovely teas for today. The first one the sender says she wasn’t sure about. It’s called Bee Hoppy and it reminds us of last year’s Manuka honey black tea.

It’s not as strong – we couldn’t drink that one without milk and this is lovely all on it’s own. Still quite a strong honey flavour, but it’s a black tea/rooibos blend and the spice of the rooibos balances out the honey lots.

Now we’re drinking Zest Wishes. This one is from David’s tea, and it’s got so much spice that at first we thought it was a rooibos, too. Turns out it’s an oolong with lots of cardemom and cinnamon. It’s kosher, a declaration which always makes us wonder just what David does to tea to make it not kosher. But it’s gorgeous. Our only complaint is that we’ve run out of the sample. We should have rationed it.

Here’s an excellent poem to go along with two excellent teas. After talking about Larkin the other day, we thought we owed you the real thing before the season was out.

Mr. Bleaney
Phillip Larkin

‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.’ Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,

Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. ‘Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.’
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook

Behind the door, no room for books or bags —
‘I’ll take it.’ So it happens that I lie
Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
On the same saucer-souvenir, and try

Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
I know his habits — what time he came down,
His preference for sauce to gravy, why

He kept on plugging at the four aways —
Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
Who put him up for summer holidays,
And Christmas at his sister’s house in Stoke.

But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don’t know.

Two lovely teas today. From Germany a lovely Earl Grey that I had over breakfast. It was creamy, the way we like Earl Grey but with a few floral hints. It’s technical name, after consultation with the packet, is Aged Earl Grey and we’d have it again. We had it with and without milk, and you can’t go wrong either way.

Davids Tea was an organic breakfast blend. There’s not a lot to say about this one because it does what it says on the tin. It’s a nice, sturdy breakfast tea that will get you through the day. We used it to recuperate between mass Flying Geese production. About which…

We thought you might like to see what we’ve been nattering about this last week. Now we just have to assemble the thing…

The orange squares are placeholders. We wanted to know how big they needed to be before we started cutting up the fabric we chose. That’s next on the list, in-between article writing and wrapping and all the usual Christmas addenda.

Here’s some more Wendy Cope for you as you drink your sensible breakfast tea. Though you don’t want to be drinking while reading. Otherwise you risk choking over this wonderful response to an anonymous grumble to The Times that no one commemorates engineers.

Engineers’ Corner
Why isn’t there an Engineers’ Corner in Westminster Abbey? In Britain we’ve always made more fuss of a ballad than a blueprint… How many schoolchildren dream of becoming great engineers?
— advertisement placed in The Times by the Engineering Council

We make more fuss of ballads than of blueprints —
That’s why so many poets end up rich,
While engineers scrape by in cheerless garrets.
Who needs a bridge or dam? Who needs a ditch?

Whereas the person who can write a sonnet
Has got it made. It’s always been the way,
For everybody knows that we need poems
And everybody reads them every day.

Yes, life is hard if you choose engineering —
You’re sure to need another job as well;
You’ll have to plan your projects in the evenings
Instead of going out. It must be hell.

While well-heeled poets ride around in Daimlers,
You’ll burn the midnight oil to earn a crust,
With no hope of a statue in the Abbey,
With no hope, even, of a modest bust.

No wonder small boys dream of writing couplets
And spurn the bike, the lorry and the train.
There’s far too much encouragement of poets —
That’s why this country’s going down the drain.

Tell you what; this writer will personally commission the Engineer’s Corner just as soon as they kit us out with teleportation and time travel. And none of the Fringe side-effects, if you please. We like our molecular cohesion in tact.

Confession; we have zero energy to blog about anything. In proof that Christmas is systematically unspooling our brain, this morning we opened up the calendar to Joyeux Lutin and thought not, ‘That’s the French,’ but ‘What is a Lutin?’

A Lutin is an Elf. The tea is called Elf Help. Apparently we stopped reading the large print. That’s impressive since we’re best at reading large print.

But the day was off to a lovely start with a Kusmi tea we didn’t know called Tzarvena. We adore Kusmi. A friend brought a sample back from a summer trip to Paris back in high school and ever since we have been addicted to their Prince Vladmir. Later, we stumbled across Kusmi in Berlin, when we couldn’t seem to move for coffee. We were delighted and the woman at the till was convinced we were British. It was easier not to correct her.

Tzarvena tastes wonderfully citrusy. More orange than Prince Vladmir, but still with spices. It’s a bit sweet, wonderfully layered and it got better the longer it steeped. But don’t you dare put milk in it. You’d loose the equisit texture of it.

Elf Help (or should we say Joyeux Lutin?)also features orange peel. There’s some coconut mixed in for sweetness and tart cranberry to balance it out. After the day we’ve had it’s the perfect way to unwind.

Almost. Here’s some more light verse to make you laugh. Like Cope, this one’s a parody. But the poet being sent up is Phillip Larkin and the poem aped is This Be the Verse.

We love This Be the Verse. But the story goes that Adrian Mitchell learned someone had misheard the opening lines of Larkin’s poem as they tuck you up, your mum and dad, and was inspired to write a response.

This Be the Worst
Adrian Mitchell
They tuck you up, your mum and dad,
They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
They give you all the treats they had
And add some extra, just for you.

They were tucked up when they were small,
(Pink perfume, blue tobacco-smoke),
By those whose kiss healed any fall,
Whose laughter doubled any joke.

Man hands on happiness to man,
It shines out like a sweetshop shelf
So love your parents all you can
And have some cheerful kids yourself.

We first found Larkin’s poem reading Lemony Snicket, and we still have a soft spot for it. But its placement in the books is singularly bizarre – and that’s a different blog. We found Mitchell’s answer years later, at poetry and cake. We like them both, but we like them differently.

We finished our paid work early today, so from noon onwards did nothing but quilt. Flying Goose after Flying Goose after Flying Goose. Tomorrow we’re dragooning a cousin and her machine into finishing them off so that we can finally start piecing.

From noon until six, that was all we did. We took a break, and we stopped for pots of Golden Nepal Typ Maloom (this is today’s German tea), but otherwise it was all quilting all day.

Having done that, we have no idea how the professionals survive. Our shoulders were not happy, and we had tried to be good about not hunching. Also, our right arm was underwhelmed by the experience and all it did was hold the fabric steady!

It was a relief to get to our evening dance class. It was the Christmas ceilidh, so we swapped out some of the more traditional music with appropriately Scottishized carols. You know, We Three Kings with Scotch snaps and Let It Snow in a strathspey setting. Honestly, you haven’t lived until you’ve danced the Scotch take on We Three Kings. It’s the jauntiest version of the song ever to go out into the world.

Now we’re sipping Organic Nine Berries from David’s Tea while trying to source suitable poems about ceilidhs. There’s not a lot out there. This seems like an omission. Apparently our society has one poet and we’ve given you quite a lot of her in bygone years.

(Actually, that’s not true. One of the social group members wrote a poem for the occasion but we don’t have it here.)

Anyway, about the tea. Golden Nepal was a lovely black tea. It’s another nice, uncomplicated one, and we quite like that because it makes a break from, say, residue-heavy Candy Cane Crush. Also, we love a good black tea. This was the perfect thing to get us through the quilting marathon.

Organic Nine Berry lives up to its name. The fruits don’t quite balance. It’s heavier on hibiscus and blueberry than strawberry, for instance. But part of that is the steeping time.

We quite like it, because the hibiscus keeps it the right side of the sharp-sweet divide. And even now more strawberry is coming through, so we’re doubling down on the importance of steeping times. You have to mix it thoroughly, too. When we poured out the berry flavour wanted to sink to the bottom. So, keep a spoon handy.

And now, here’s that ceilidh poem for you. It’s talking about an oldy-worldy, properly traditional ceilidh. The kind where dances, stories and music jumble together. They still do them, and we have fond memories of one out on the Isle of Mull, but these days the word is more synonymous with dancin. Enjoy!

The Time Traviveller’s Convention
Sheena Blackhall

Bring a pairtner tae the Ceilidh
Dress informal, the invite stated
At the time traivellers’ convention.

Mary Queen o Scots arrived hersel
Signed up fur speed-datin.
Said she wis a romantic,
Cud lose her heid ower the richt chiel.

The sheik in the tartan troosers
Turned oot tae be Rabbie Burns
Wi a bevy o beauties he’d gaithered
On his traivels.

John Knox tuik charge o the raffle
The kirk being eesed tae collectin
Naebody socht him fur a lady’s choice.

Lord Byron niver missed a single dance
In the Gay Gordons. He wis last tae leave.

The Loch Ness Monster, playin watter music
Last seen wis reelin roon bi Ailsa Crag
Wi thirteen kelpies and a Shetlan silkie.

Feedback suggests they’ll aa be back neist year.

Fun fact: when we started the search for ‘poems about ceilidhs,’ Google tried to complete the query with ‘poems about ceiling fans.’ We have several follow up questions. One, is there ceiling fan poetry out there? Two, would that have been the easier search? And finally, what convinced poets this was a gap in the universal body of poetry that needed filling?

We may have to look for you for tomorrow. But no promises.

Lots of teas today. I had my first of the German teas over breakfast. That was a lovely spiced Chai called Karl-Heinz. We’re told this is an old German joke that harkens back to the many double-barrelled names that cropped up in certain generations. As a tea it was a beautiful example of flavoured black tea. No sweetners, a bit of vanilla, cloves, and several other spices. It was warm, creamy and the perfect breakfast tea.

Around noon we stopped work and swapped Advent calendar’s for David’s Tea. That was a black tea, too, and this is where I should segue into the Wendy Cope poem about bloody men and buses. But this year it’s not true since I’m not rationing black tea. Though I still remember the year I ran out and refused to restock until January. I got exceptionally creative about what constituted a breakfast tea.

Candy Cane Crush is one we sometimes keep in stock here at Dawlish Dachshund central. So, we knew it right away, right down to the sticky residue it leaves on everyting. It’s actually a lovely tea. The candy cane is a nice compliment to the black tea. But it also has a bizarre effect on the tea’s appearance. It pours out sort of murky or cloudy. The first time we saw it we assumed we poured to early, but it’s something to do with what happens when melting candy cane meets boiling water.

This also accounts for the residue. Anyone who’s ever held a candy cane past a certain point knows what we’re talking about. You need several gallons of soap and a good scourer to get this stuff off your teapot. It’s irritating, but not enough to put us off the tea. We love the peppermint flavour it has.

Finally, we made a pot of Low Rider Green tea before starting on more Flying Geese. They’re taking over our lives. We broke up our evening program to stock up on more fat quarters just in case. This thing will get done, by hook or by crook.

Anyway, the green tea was a beautiful, uncomplicated sort of tea. Our grandmother would have liked it. Nothing fancy, no flourishes. Interesting enough to make a change, not so interesting as to be overwhelming. The perfect tea to drink before pinning another half dozen Flying Geese.

And now, a poem. Yesterday we gave you a cat poem, so the edict of what you do to the right-hand cat you must do to the left-hand dachshunds says we owe you another poem about dogs tonight. This one is delightful, and we’ve been looking for an excuse to air it.

Drama
Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance-
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she
would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

Question: Just how excessively egregious is the bad form of posting poetry in honour of dachshunds while a cat sits entwined in your arms? She’s got her throat exposed and everything. Either she can’t read or can’t be bothered reading…