yonmei

02:54 pm: *yawn*
Yesterday, I drank far too much coffee. I had my last cup sometime before 4pm, and decided that Wednesday was going to be a caffeine-free day.

No one's done my meme. It was a silly meme, but it made me happy. oh well.

I got chocolate and a book from afrai yesterday! But no clover seeds. Wail. Sadness. Loss. Why will no one sell me/send me clover seeds? It is very disturbing.

I am drinking caffeine-free tea. With milk. It is quite nice.

My socks got very wet this morning, and I am walking around the office barefoot. So far no one has commented, and I feel that no one may have noticed. I hate wearing damp socks.

I am tired. *yawn* It is probably best not to drink coffee for this reason.

Last night when I came back, my cats both slept on my bed. Wolf slept on my feet, or rather on my legs, and Bob was curled up by my right hand readily available for petting. Then Bob realised where Wolf was and growled and growled and moved further up the bed and curled up on the part of the duvet covering my shoulder. She wanted to make clear I was hers. It's rather sweet. Sort of.

More decaf tea, I think.

Tags: cat politics, not drinking coffee, tea

03:35 pm: Vanishing biscuits
When, on Thursday, one buys a packet of Cadbury's new oat-and-chocolate biscuits, and another packet of custard creams, for the purpose of treating the envelope-stuffing team (who perform wonders for us at very little cost and tell us gratefully that none of their other employers give them biscuits...) and note, on Thursday evening, that practically all the oat-and-chocolate biscuits are left but almost all the custard creams are gone, one does not expect, I say plaintively, to discover that on Monday afternoon at approximately 3:30pm just when one wants a chocolate biscuit to nibble on with a cup of tea, to find that every single biscuit has been consumed.

Or rather, having shared an office with Mouse and Homosamurai#1 for several years now, it's exactly what I do expect. My surprise is overstated. I bring in packets of biscuits when I bought them because I just fancied one, and knew the hollow legs of my workmates would dispose of the rest.

Biscuits vanish. It's what they're for. It's their purpose in life. It's their Quest.

But I did want a chocolate biscuit just now, and now I shall have to Do Without.

Tags: bloody work, sometimes i write about food, tea

12:40 pm: On lunching
Yesterday, instead of lunch, we had afternoon tea.

We started at two and we went on till nearly four, and after tea we sat around for over half an hour just doing nothing and smiling sleepily at each other and talking occasionally and reading bits of the Weekend Guardian.

(It was at the Howard Hotel in Great King Street. Costs £15.95 per person, you have to book in advance - though we rang Saturday and got a table without difficulty, so not far in advance.)

It was gorgeously delectable. There were finger sandwiches, various sorts, over half vegetarian. The bread was nice - not by-my-standards-good-bread, which is to say, not homebaked sourdough with stoneground flour: but decent-by-catering-standards bread. There were scones, which were still warm. There were little chocolate muffins with white chocolate filling (those were a little dry and crumby, but very chocolately). There were strawberry tarts with chantilly cream. There were tiny rich cakes to finish, and two tall thin glasses of a rhubarb mousse topped with whipped cream. And tea. Half a dozen choices.

And as I said: we ate slowly, delectably, enjoying each mouthful. It was all good. We took two hours over it. We were first there, so we chose a table for two in the window, with comfy but solid armchairs (not lean-back, but uprights) and ate and looked out of the window and talked about the luxury of the room and the service and class and sex and humor and family and Scottish/English class patterns and education and tea.

Today, for lunch, I had a baked potato and baked beans (bought at the chip shop across the road) and cabbage salad (brought from home) and for savoury a homemade vegeburger and a small piece of Arran cheddar with apple, also brought from home. I ate fast and was done in half an hour, including the time taken to walk over the road and get my potato and beans.

It was perfectly good food, what I had for lunch today. I wouldn't want to eat a lunch as rich as yesterday's every day. But I would prefer to take my time over lunch: I wish I did. I just don't, when I eat alone: except perhaps when I have a packed lunch to eat on a long train trip, when I am usually delving into the first bits by eleven thirty and may not finish till two. When eating out, or at work, or at home, if I eat alone, I eat fast.

Quite often I eat fast in company, too. But I can make a conscious effort to slow down and enjoy myself when eating with friends. Eating alone, I don't seem to be able to do that - except when, on a train, I know I am absolutely free to take my time because there is literally nothing else I could be doing, aside from getting from A to B, which I am already doing. (The same would probably apply, and more so, to long trips by plane - if the food was nice enough to want to linger over, which it isn't, and if the flight attendant let you, which they won't.)

When you lunch alone, do you eat fast or slow?

Tags: eating some delicious food, lunch, tea

08:24 pm: Hot tea with whisky
...is very very fine stuff.

Mmmm.

Even if you don't really like whisky, which I confess I don't, the flavour blends wonderfully well with the flavour of tea, and, as Uncle* would put it, leaves you feeling warmed and braced. Gleamhound could have done no better.

Also, my printer problems are resolved (thank you glitterboy1), and I don't need to continue the saga.

===
*Uncle is an elephant. He's immensely rich, and he's a B.A. He dresses well, generally in a purple dressing-gown, and often rides about on a traction engine, which he prefers to a car.

Tags: elephant, tea, uncle, whisky

12:10 pm: Friday five: tea
gacked from gryphonrhi

( it's all about tea )

Tags: friday five, tea