Sometimes I find myself thinking about and appreciating more, the little things that happen that usually go on around me that I don’t take the time to register.
A classic example is having a cup of tea. I like tea, I enjoy different blends, much in the same way as I enjoy different blends of malt whisky but the reality is I 99% of the tea I drink is made with a tea bag, not that the quality of tea in a bag is poor, it’s just like drinking a blended whisky (where is this alcohol analogy coming from??) It’s one of those things we just do without really bothering to ‘taste’ it properly. Why? Well, probably because we don’t expect too much from it, after all, we know it’s not a premium blend so we just consume it more out of habit than with any desire to appreciate it.
Today at work I must have drank 3, maybe 4 cups of tea and I’m not sure if I could have told you anything about them, other than I ended up leaving them too long so they were tepid when I did finally pause for a second or two to gulp them down. I stayed late at the office and finished up a few things, not back in until Tuesday so I thought it wise to finish all the little jobs I had mean meaning to do, like lock-down the front desk computers. Anyway, I finally got in just after 10pm and headed for the kitchen to fix something to eat, it’d been a long day…
I looked at a bottle of red wine and considered opening it, after all, no work tomorrow, getting drunk was an option… but I wasn’t in the mood for wine so I left it… I opened the fridge and considered a beer but I didn’t really feel like a beer either, I poured myself a glass of milk and popped the kettle on, “Fuck it!” I thought, “I’m going to have a nice cup of tea” I’m not sure why I thought I’d make a ‘nice’ cup of tea, I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to make a crap cup, nevertheless a cup of tea is what I made and I sat down at the kitchen table and proceeded to finish reading my copy of Computer Weekly, I was a little disappointed with Dilbert… it didn’t raise a chuckle… I picked up the cup and took a sip, “Mmmm,” I thought, “That tastes good!” I took another sip it was indeed a nice cup of tea, I put the magazine down and leaned back in the chair and supped from the mug that my Gran bought me when I returned from Australia in 1998, 10 years old and not a chip on it…Why I mention that is anyone’s guess, it certainly didn’t aid the tea in tasting good but the more I drank the more I was convinced, I was indeed drinking a VERY nice cup of tea…
I’m not sure if every cup of tea I have supped on has tasted like the one I had tonight or if it was just me taking the time to actually ‘taste’ the tea by doing nothing else but drink it, no music, no reading, no distractions at all, just me and a mug of piping hot, pre-lactarian tea made with Twinings Yellow Label blended bags.
The next time you have a cup of tea, or coffee pause for a moment and really taste it instead of gulping it down as you rush to get on with whatever it is you are doing… You’ll find the extra few minutes you spend appreciating it will heighten your enjoyment of the tasty beverage you hold in your hands. After all, it wasn’t called a ‘tea break’ for nothing, never mind the kit-kat, have a break and enjoy a cup of tea :)
I’m off to put the kettle on!
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