TEA: I don’t want to make you one.

Drinking tea brings me great pleasure. Making tea for others and seeing their relief, joy, appreciation and gratitude also makes me very happy. In the first of what I imagine will become a series on such a topic, I want to explore the occasions where I just think: “you don’t deserve my tea!”

No-one wants to receive a begrudgingly made tea. Cast your mind back to the last time you brewed up for someone else with a less than enthusiastic attitude, and you will probably find that the recipient belonged to one of the three groups below:

1. The family member/s. Crucially, this is where tea is simply expected (every time you leave the sofa). You will often be asked to make tea at inconvenient times (“I’M ON THE PHONE!") and will usually be required to make more teas than the average ad break will allow. In the latter case, the cups are typically non-matching, of various shapes and sizes (meaning that only two can be transported safely at a time). Recipients will have preferred cups and will get angry should they receive ‘the wrong one’: “Oh I hate this cup, couldn’t you have given me the tall one with the chipped handle? It’s too thick on the rim, I can’t drink it”. 

Should you attempt to slyly make a brew just for yourself and get caught, they will cry: “Er, where’s mine? Oh that’s right, make yourself one why don’t you – don’t bother about anyone else!” If what you produce is less than average, you may be forced to remake or hear the words “I’ll make it my bloody self! – no, no – you can’t be bothered so I might as well do it”. Once settled with your own tea, a parent will tell you - “don’t put that on the carpet, it’ll leave a ring and you’ll knock it over. Use a coaster or rest it on this paper” (whilst flinging a newspaper across the room at you – which then probably falls apart mid-air, nearly knocking your tea over in the process). The whole experience is stressful and makes you dread the kettle popping. Tea drinking becomes private, like a secret pleasure (unless someone gets up off of the sofa (silently), in which case, you yell, “YES PLEASE! THE OLD MAN GREEN CUP!”)

2. Someone you live with. Tea is expected here, but if not received, will typically be met with ‘petty payback’ as oppose to an indignant outburst. Examples may include: making them a poor tea; making a point of not washing up their items; displacement of internal anger (be honest, you’re not in a mood because the kitchen’s a mess – it’s because I didn’t make you a cuppa half an hour ago). NOTE: With house-sharers, there is often too much ‘tea-choice’ in the cupboard, resulting in lengthy preparation and requirements for confirmation (“hang on, so do you want a peppermint tea or a ‘normal’ tea?”). This, in turn, leads to constant to-ing and fro-ing between cupboards and the fridge whilst you attempt to cater for their seemingly overwhelming demands. This effortful exchange is much softer than with the family member however, and any real feelings of inconvenience usually subside after drinking a cup of tea.

3. THAT person in the office who is always happy to receive tea, but rarely offers to make you a brew in return. You, seeking tea-buddies wherever you roam, will endeavour to produce the finest colouring and flavouring of tea within each cup you make them. After a few weeks, you’ll begin to notice that such efforts are not returned, and that, on the rare occasion that such a person makes YOU a cup of tea, it will always be unsatisfactory: “er...did the water even touch the teabag?” This will lead to feelings of annoyance, and typically, overtime, your own efforts will begin to diminish, resulting in a cycle of poor teas where no-one ever wins, and no-one ever enjoys the tea. 

In summary, a cup of tea will not taste as good when one of the ingredients is a bad attitude. The next in this series will give steps to overcome this: 

How to trick people into thinking you make a really good cup of tea.

Perfect Egg & Soldiers

It’s morning. The kettle is on. Bored of your usual breakfast choices, you start to peruse the cupboards for inspiration. Your eye catches some comical looking egg cups and your head says one thing: “ahhh yeaaah!”

Egg and soldiers (when done properly) will always start your day off brilliantly. Here is a guide to set you up for success. Please note: this is not for the apathetic egg-maker. 

PART 1: Getting started

Ingredients:
2x eggs (drawn on faces optional)
2x slices of bread
Butter (Lurpak or Clover is best)
Salt

Apparatus: 

- 1x pan

1. Place eggs in the pan and fill with water until they are 95% immersed and start to boil. (Optional: add salt to the water so that it “permeates through the shell”).

2. At EXACTLY the moment where the water starts to bubble, start timing FOUR MINUTES. It is absolutely CRUCIAL that your timing is accurate. Put your bread in the toaster at this point as well.

PART 2: The game begins

Treat this stage as a military operation. The eggs have started boiling, the bread is in the toaster. You have approximately 2 minutes to gather together the rest of your apparatus. You can, of course, do this in Part 1, but I enjoy the sense of urgency – it’s what I imagine being on Fun House would have been like.

Apparatus:
1x plate
2x egg cups (ignore jealous comments from house sharers: “why is your plate half covered with toys?!”)
1x butter knife
1x sharp knife
1x tea towel
1x tea spoon
1x egg-remover-from-the-pan tool

The toaster pops. 

3. Grab the toast out of the toaster and wave it around for 30 seconds to aid the cooling down process (cooler toast = more mum-lumps* of butter). 

4. Lavishly butter toast using the butter knife and use the sharp knife to create soldiers (5 per slice). 

5. Place soldiers on plate (by allowing the soldiers to stack slightly in a haphazard fashion, it will give the illusion that you have more soldiers, making the eating experience more enjoyable).

Four minutes should now be up.

6. Turn off heat. Use egg-remover-from-the-pan tool to fish out eggs and place them in the holders. 

7. Use tea towel to hold egg steady and use the sharp knife again to clean-cut the heads off of the eggs. 

Note: People have other methods for “neatly” beheading the eggs, but two points spring to mind here:

                1. It takes too long – the eggs are still cooking whilst you faff around.

                2. They tend to leave shards of shell everywhere: MESSY.

8. Reveal the golden runny eggs that make you fist the air and cry “YES!”  

9. Add lashings of salt.

Enjoy.

* Mum-lumps are the buttery product of motherly carelessness when buttering toast, but they taste amazing.

  

How to do 'Magic Eye'

It was recently brought to my attention (again) that my housemate Irene is unable to “do” magic eye puzzles. She has been so damaged by her previous failures in this area, that she has since adopted avoidance strategies to prevent being confronted (albeit, rarely) with future magic eye-related challenges. This feeling of inadequacy is understandable, given that she is usually successful in all areas of life (except making *truly* excellent tea / walking around the house at normal volumes / recycling everything - yes, even the "sa...cla! SACLA!" pesto jar, which is still in the wrong bin). Future posts may cover such topics.

It is therefore my wish to try and guide her into success, in the hope that in the privacy of her own room, away from perceived or actual ridicule / embarrassment / frustration, that she might "do an Aaliyah" and try again. 

So, despite what some have been told, magic eye success is not found by staring at the picture for 20 minutes solid without blinking. It is a very simple eye movement (which is not much different to adjusting to contact lenses when you put them on your eye...but she doesn't wear them, so...)

Preparation

1. Hold up your index fingers and point them at one another (so your index finger tips are 1cm apart), one SHATTER PROOF RULER'S distance from your face.

2. Look into the distance behind your fingers (do not look directly at your fingers). It should now look like there is a floating sausage inbetween your finger tips (note: it will feel a little bit like your eyes have slightly crossed at this point).

3. This is the key step to mastering magic eye. You need to slowly move your gaze from the distance, to focus on the sausage (although, if you try and focus on your fingers directly, you should find that the sausage illusion disappears). 

The same 'eye feelings' apply to the magic eye...

Challenge

1. Look at the picture (the more of your vision it takes up, the easier it will be - sit closer to the screen if necessary). 

2. Remember to look into the distance of the picture, allowing your eyes to adjust (in the same way that you saw the finger sausage, they will ever so slightly cross, but more in an accidental way, than a "I MUST FORCE THEM TO CROSS" way). 

3. At this point, you might think you've seen it (then probably got too cocky and lost it). The key step again, is to slowly move your focus to the centre of the picture (it will feel a little bit as though you are uncrossing your eyes). The picture should slowly become 3D and you should be able to focus on the image.

Conk

If this STILL doesn't work then I will try and explain again. If it does work, and you can text me the image that you see, then I'll buy you some Haribo (but not Tangtastics, 'cause they sort of hurt my face).


Final thought: "Sausage Eyes" is something completely different and unrelated to this post.

The Argos catalogue

One would probably think that there’s not much to say on the Argos catalogue, least of all to blog about, but I’d argue that it’s a great nostalgic magazine for three pretty specific reasons.

1. Skateboarding potential

It’s a great skateboard on carpeted floors (surprisingly so too, given the thickness. You’d expect the spine to tilt on the 'push off'...but it doesn’t - unlike the Yellow Pages). Worthy competitors include: Freemans catalogue, special offer leaflets and Spinechiller magazines.

2. The “Argos Catalogue Game” (2 players)

Set-up: 1x Argos catalogue open in front of players, sat side-by-side. 

Aim: Pick the item you would want on each page before the other person potentially picks it
Rules: Turn the page. Quickly point to what you would choose (if you could have anything). Fastest finger wins. In the case of a dispute, oldest player wins. Loser must pick an alternative item. Continue game until the last page or, until dinner is ready. Resume post-dinner.  

3. Parental misuse

Perhaps my favourite memory: compiling my wish list to Father Christmas using the Argos catalogue, and getting Dad to check it.

“Dad, here’s my list. Can you spell check it please?”
“That’s great Liv. You need to make it a bit easier for Father Christmas though – he's got a lot of kids to get presents for. So, what you need to do [cue Dad reaching for the Argos catalogue], is write the page number, product code, and the price next to each item on your list. Okay?”
“Okay Dad, thanks”. 

Geography IS fun.

Dear Mr Berry,

Despite what you may recall, I can assure you, I definitely was listening when you were teaching us about rivers. In fact, on the rare occasions that I find myself walking alongside one, I still mentally label the different parts in my head (although it's your booming voice that I hear, rather than my own: "SOURCE", "MEANDER", "MOUTH").

In the lead up to you telling me to "pay attention and stop doodling", I was actually 'doing Geography' - reflecting how Ireland is often left out when people 'cartoon up' the UK map. It is clearly a bear in mid-jump. 

I drew this for you in the hope that you will see it too.

With fond memories of your scariness,

Olivia