Monday October 2nd 2006

Monday October 2nd.

October already. It pounced a chilly grip this year, September was positively balmy. Nature seems in a tizzy, tropical fish on our shores, poisonous ones even - how glam are we, and chestnut trees giving up the ghost. The UK changing from temperate to tropical. No conkers. No rock pool safe. Is danger everywhere or is it just how I'm interpreting the news? It seems to me the sole purpose of journalism and documentary film making is to scare the bejesus out of us all so we keep on troughing 'round IKEA and eating junk food sublimating our desire to scream STOP!!!!!
At the top of our voices
From the top of a hill
Face forward bent from the hips
Arms petrified straight behind
Like a mad ski jumper, screaming
STOP!!!!!!!!

Perhaps it's just me.
And, when the notion strikes, you can't beat a good trough around IKEA.
In my opinion.
Although I can't help but wonder what's in a sausage of a 95p breakfast.
I do enjoy their slightly dodgy edge.

So I'm working from home and I love it. I have that feeling of all things coming together and something wonderful about to happen. Autumn always gets me like that though. Magic in the air. Candlelight and Jane Eyre. Again.

Home working is helping me to make my life, I want to say small, but that's not the word. The word is 'essence'. I am getting to the essence of things, me, my life, my wants, my needs, my likes, what's good for the planet. Walking, not using the car I am finding all sorts of new bistros, shops, classes and people in my world. In slowing it down I have expanded my world. No diminishing here. Best of all, I make the effort to be more sociable. Just to see human beings. Although there are times when I go to things knowing they will be so tedious that I'll not feel lonely for a month afterwards¦those are less and less common now that I pick and choose my connections and accept what the Universe dances to me. There is such magic in stopping trying to make things happen. It's the only way to, well, make things happen.

I am distilling, decocting, filtrating, reducing, infusing. Creating tisanes to keep the juices of my life ever sweet.
Reflected in my obsessive search for the perfect tea. 'Parlez-moi d'amour' my most recent purchase, a floral bouquet too gorgeous to waste in hot water. I just open the rose pink tin and sniff it of a morning instead. Tea is part of the same family as Camellia. I like that.
When is a tea a tisane? When it uses herbal leaves, flowers or berries apart from the leaf of the 'real' tea plant.

Yesterday, I had a flower tea. Tiny camomile heads compressed inside what looked like a dried paper ball. The size of a 'kingie' marble . Dropped into the glass teapot, in the hot water, it slowly unfurled, opening so languorously. I hoped to see a tiny mermaid. A seahorse would not have looked out of place. A cross between an orange chrysanthemum and a sea anemone in a sunk-float at the bottom of the pot. The tiny flower heads tucked inside now floating to the surface and around the hot water, like dandelion wishes on a silent late Summer afternoon. Goldfish shades growing every deeper. It was beautifully relaxing to watch. The wonder of it opening up.
Unfortunately, it tasted more like a sea anemone than a flower, but I'm sure that made it all the more beneficial.
They come from China. Of course. Calling me, like a bell. I want to visit. Where they make glorious tea flowers to delight the soul. Come and visit us, look how decorative we are.
Where they leave baby girls out to die of exposure and execute more human beings than anywhere else in the world.
It seems to me they have a need to be able to delight and distract with tea flowers.