Boiling up a batch of bafflement.

Fancy a cuppa? Me too. Let's put the kettle on.

(pinched from here
http://www.plokta.com/plokta/issue4/pedantic.htm)

Yes, very funny. I'm sure everyone has done that at some point to show how side-splittingly funny they are. Then they get bored and wander off to play with their crayons.

One day, I had to go into town for some reason or another. It was something of a miserable day; grey, drizzly and everyone seemed to have been created solely for the purpose of getting in my way and pissing me off. It's no surprise, then to hear that I was really rather glad to be getting home. 

It's at time's like this that Julie shows a truly remarkable talent for precognition. Granted, our front room has a bay window and looks out onto the street, but Julie always seems to know of my imminent arrival even before I could be seen trudging up the road. A short while before I get home, Julie will have made herself a drink, leaving enough water in the kettle for another generously filled mug.

Obviously, since Julie's drink will have been made some time before key meets lock, the water in the kettle will not be as warm as it could be. Or, as Julie put it,

Tongue-twisting tea for two

A few days ago, me and Julie were out for a walk and went to The Plantation tea and coffee house in Eastbourne. One of the reasons I like going there is that it's usually a little less noisy than the normal places. Another is that it has that sort of semi-colonial vibe going, with wood and wicker furniture and decorations.
The main reason I like the place, though, is the range of tea varieties on offer.

As some our longer-term readers will recall, I am rather fond of a cup of brown joy. From the moment I get up, enjoying at least two cups of standard tea (often known as English Breakfast). Unlike the good Professor Elemental, however, I will also partake of a herbal infusion or two. Summer berries, chamomile, blueberry and apple (don't knock it; it's actually really rather nice) are all favourites. I'm even rather partial to white tea and green tea, although the latter, for me, needs to be tempered with another flavour - lemon's good.

Above all of those, my personal favourite is lapsang souchong.

It has a smoky aroma and flavour, but it's quite mild. If you have tried Earl Grey, then just imagine a halfway point between that and normal black tea. Mmmmmmm...

Julie, however, is not a fan. Give her 'normal' tea any day. In fact, it's not just the taste that turns her off. The smell is not particularly appealing to her either. Remember this Gem?

Ladies, gentlemen and hedgehogs, I'll let you into a little secret. Since I shared that little Gem with you all, we have discussed both it and the tea itself on numerous occasions. And you know what? I don't think Julie has once managed to pronounce the name correctly - nor has she managed to repeat any single version. Even when faced with 'Lobsang dipshit', poor Julie's brain reacts with 'bugger that' and throws out any old collection of syllables.

Like the other day. Since this little cafe has an especially nice blend of Lapsang Souchong, I generally go for that. I have tried others - the gunpowder green tea is flavoursome - but it's usually the Lobsa... er, Lapsang Souchong.*
When the waitress brought the teapots over, Julie was curious as to what I had ordered.

Heh. It reminds me of that famous tongue twister,

"The sixth sheik's sixth sheep's sick."

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* Um. I have a confession to make. That point where I made a joke of typing the false name before switching to the real one? I wasn't faking it. At some point between my brain and my fingers, the message got garbled and I started typing 'Lobsang dipshit' as an automatic reflex... Oh well.

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***NEWS***

I received an email yesterday from the organisers of World Book Night 2013 - apparently, my copies of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair have arrived and should be ready for me to collect. Expect a special post very soon!

Hard water

So, how is your week going? Need a drink yet? Need several? How about a spot of Adam's Ale?
In case you're not too familiar with this most English of colloquialisms, Adam's Ale is nothing more than water. I'm guessing it has less to do with that celebrated hairy cueball of Mythbusters fame and more to do with the Biblically alleged first man.

Pedantry aside, water is probably the best thing you can drink, as long as it's not contaminated. Me, I love the stuff, which is just as well as I generally need to drink lots of fluid in the course of a day in a dusty warehouse. Even then, I do find that water on its own can leave my mouth and throat feeling quite dry, ironically enough. Not only that, but it's nice to have a little flavour in it, too.
Julie is less fond of water as a drink. However, needs must when the devil drives and all that... er, sorry. Another colloquialism. That said, if there's nothing else available and you are thirsty, you're not going to turn down a sip of water, are you?
Julie won't, at least. My wife came into the room where I was busy working at the table one day, and we chatted for a little while. After a few minutes, her voice cracked and she asked if she could have a sip of my drink. Naturally enough, I passed my glass over and she took a sip. No sooner had she swallowed, though, than she grimaced in an exaggerated fashion. I was a little surprised, as I hadn't thought it to be that bad.

I would have asked Julie with what she wished the water to be 'diluted', but I was too busy writing the Gem down.
In the spirit of fairness, I suppose I had best point out that the water had come straight from the tap and we live in what is known as a 'hard water' area. This gives the stuff a certain taste, it's true, and even I have to admit it's not the best flavouring in the world. Still, you have to love the turn of phrase, right?

Down at Le Café Crazy

It was some years ago that I first came across the concept of a cream tea. In my teens, I would be on family trips and see them on menus, but choose not to have them. As it happened, nobody else had them either, so any curiosity I may have had at the time remained unassuaged.
Some years later, I had dropped ignominiously out of college and everything was, for quite some time operating on a shoestring. Eventually though, things got better and I could then afford to go places. One of the first things I did do was take a trip to a large family event that was taking place quite some distance away. Since the invite was for guest 'plus one' and my sister was taking her current beau - one of my friends - I asked if it was OK to bring along another friend as my '+1'. This friend was the fourth and final member of our little coterie and would have been the only uninvited member. This was OK'd (even though it led to long-running speculation upon my sexual preferences), so we all booked rooms in the same B&B near the party.
The four of us arrived a day early for the party, so we decided to venture out into town (Southend), just to get our bearings. After a while, we decided to take a breather and stopped at a cafe. My friend looked at the menu and opted for the cream tea. I was curious by now about what a cream tea entailed, but I had never ordered one, just in case it meant a cup of tea with cream instead of milk. As it turned out, a cream tea is a pot of tea, one or two scones, some jam and a portion of cream (clotted cream for preference).

NB - many cafes mistakenly include butter with the cream tea. Wrong - this is why you should use clotted cream, because it is effectively replacing the butter. Cut open the scone, spread some cream and then spoon some jam on top. Oh yes - and the scones should be freshly baked to, so they crumble slightly when you bite into them.
Yum.
Anyway... where was I? Oh yes.
Fast forward to the present. I have since met, fallen in love with, and married Julie.
This weekend just gone, the two of us were out and about and popped by a cafe called Neates Cakery. As you can guess, they have a certain specialisation. And believe me, they do very well in that area - here's the menu:

And here's their basic(!) selection of cakes - usually also available as cupcakes.

Pity the website isn't complete - they're on Facebook though.

Lovely cakes, eh?
In the end, though, I went for a tuna/cheese melt panini, and Julie opted for the cream tea. Well, there was a little moment of hesitation before the final decision was made.

Seriously?
If it wasn't bad enough, I've actually lost count of the amount of times, Julie has had, or at the very least shared, a cream tea. Oh, deary me.