Pukka

This is a little bit on consumer power and the internet...

I like herbal teas. I find the medicinal ones from health food shops a little much a lot of the time, they are fine if you have a health issue you need them for, but for everyday drinking pleasure... The teas generally sold in Tesco come in a few main varieties - summer fruit, mint, chamomile and a few others, maybe chai, maybe ginger or jasmine. You know the sort of thing...

Then Pukka appeared on the shelves. They were lovely. Blends of different herbs and spices to create beautiful, balanced teas with lovely names.

There was...

Love - rose, chamomile and lavender

There was...

Detox - aniseed, fennel and licorice

There was...

Clarity - ginger, lemongrass and gotu kola

There was...

Harmonise - rose, hibiscus, vanilla, shatavari, licorice and chamomile



and they were lovely. I owned all of them at work and at home and drank whichever one I fancied at the time and it was all good.

and then....

Tesco decided to stop stocking them. eek! They didn't stop stocking Pukka teas but I sensed the hand of Tesco in the choice of flavours that Pukka decided to develop.

We have...

Night time - chamomile, oatstraw and lavender

Three ginger - ginger, galangal and golden turmeric

Three mint - peppermint, spearmint and fieldmint

The mint is very minty and the ginger is very gingery but the night time is really nice. This only gives me one variety to play with at work that I really like. *sigh*

So I go online. What I discover is that Pukka have a lovely little internet business going. Not only that but all my old favourites are still there. And even better there are a whole lod of other beautiful and interesting teas there for me to try!

We have...

Relax - chamomile, fennel and marshmallow

Revitalise - cinnamon, cardamon and ginger

Refresh - peppermint, licorice and rose

Cleanse - nettle, fennel and aloe vera

Protect - Jasmine green tea, cardamon and rosemary

Pleasure - cocoa, licorice and roasted chicory

Three Berry - elderberry, blueberry and blackberry



oooh! So when I got paid I went and ordered all my favourites plus all the ones I had never tried before. The presence of variety packs means that this was cheaper than shopping for the new premium teas Tesco stock and I don't like so much.

They arrived earlier this week and since then I have been enjoying the return of beautiful variety to my tea breaks....

I know this is a shameless plug for Pukka (that they will probably never know about) but it is an important thing to me. I hate the way that supermarkets cater for the lowest common denominator. We think they are giving us choice but in reality they so often take choice away and discourage us from cooking and thinking for ourselves.

We are creatures of habit and so often we develop habits and then they take them away from us. Well, I no longer buy tea from Tesco.... I buy it direct. Did I mention that it is organic?

Still

It is late and I should be in bed. Tonight I went out by myself. It was a works thing and F's work has taken him away all weekend. i find myself sad at the thought of spending so long without him. The presence of friends didn't make up for the lack of him...

I found myself alone on the beach after dark. The moon was near full and the stars were coming out. Someone sat on the cliff lit a flying lantern and let it go off the cliff. I watched it drift out to sea as I bade my love good night on my phone.

So I have an entire weekend of freedom....

Now home with a small (not really) dog curled up and I am resorting to blogging and chocolate cake. All that a girl needs...

Residual Image

I am unsure whether to make this a post about general things or to put some more specific thoughts down. I have so many things to write about right now.... But I am going to go with the thoughts, cos if I don't I shall forget them....

Do you ever bump into someone and it is clear that they are reacting to you as if you were still the same person, who would do the same things and make the same choices, as when they previously knew you? I sort of had this happen to me tonight, on my way home.

I bumped in to someone I knew back when I was still single and wild and a student. He was married at that time but possibly the unfaithful type (suspected rather than proven) and a little full of himself. I had no idea that he and his wife were no more but he dropped this into conversation and then wondered off with an odd cheeky expression on his face. I bumped into him again and helped him find something. We chatted a little on the way to the tills and he asked how my love life is (he knows very well I have been with F for quite some time). I am a little down cos F is away all weekend with work and got given the evening shift before and after he comes back. So my response was that F was working and pulled a disappointed face and his response was that he couldn't come round. (ew! as if I would want him too!) He made a few more remarks and then wandered off again...

I so hate this sort of behaviour! He was playing games either because he wanted too boost his own self image or because he wanted a roll in the hay. He wouldn't have spent time chatting me up if he met me in a pub these days, I am fat and dull, really, if those are the sorts of criteria you have. He is remembering the me that could drink a lot of the chaps under the table, the me that was somewhat wild (although never actually as wild as the rumour mill would have people believe...) That was the me he was playing games with, not the devoted fiance of a very lovely man.

Thing is, I have seen this in operation via facebook recently from the other side... In college, many years ago, I knew a lovely, good, clean cut sort of a chap. Slowly via facebook that old crowd is finding each other again and a friend who had found him, suggested him to me. I was shocked at what I found. I found a man who had been diagnosed with MS in his mid-twenties nearly a decade ago and had shortly after diagnosis become wheel chair bound.

I still see him as I knew him. Yes that residual image exists in there somewhere within him but he is a long way from that person. A very, very long way. We all are but for some people that difference time makes is more obvious.

I think we pass through life with little echoes of ourselves spinning off and held in the memories of the people we once knew. Like flies trapped in amber. All the me's that each of has ever been are not lost, they are there... somewhere for a while....

Thing is these echoes come with emotions attached. If we did something bad, they come with bad emotions. We do something good and they come with good emotions. Most sets of emotions are more complicated than that. And these emotions stay atatched unless new meetings with that person alter the emotions.

If we meet a person who carries an echo, then their reaction to us can not be that of a complete stranger. For some people they trap, others they comfort. If you are a member of a community for a long time, the amber echoes must form a web.

Imagine going through life always trapped, once the bad boy, always the bad boy? Doomed to never, be given a break?

Imagine being the goody two shoes? Never being able to cut loose? Never being able to drop those standards?

Maybe we need to let people re-establish their echoes once in a while and let go of the emotions we attach to their memories.

Maybe when we re-meet someone from long ago we shouldn't expect them to be the same person or treat them in the same way.

Heat

I like the idea of Summer but I am not sure I like it in person. The last couple of Summers have been nice, they were wet and dull enough not to ever get too hot for too long. It is only just July and it is already too hot.

This sort of weather is the sort where you want a house with stone flooring so it stays nice and cool. The sort where when I lived with my folks, if I went out in the heat of the day, more often than not it would be to go and lay in the long cool grass in the shade of the orchard. OK, so my house has nice thick granite walls, downstairs doesn't get unbearable....

But work? I work in a giant tin shack. To be fair I work in the cooler end of the shack but it still gets a wee bit hot. Us Brits, we don't build for hot weather. We like to think we are hard done by in terms of weather. Thing is, that is just our pessimistic outlook. We actually have more than enough hot weather to justify a little consideration.

In the city I remember one particular building which was recently built, with no air con and no opening windows. They then filled it with people and computers. It was horrid. Nasty. Cheap. Inconsiderate.

Thing is, we don't design for the cold either. Scandinavians have oodles of insulation in their homes. They make us look like amateurs. The technology is there and cheap and not very far away.

We design for mediocre weather that we don't get very often. Thing is, our ancestors were much better at this whole thing. They designed to last and made their buildings look beautiful. They had windows that opened and huge fireplaces. To be the wrong temperature encouraged illness and they had no penicillin to make it all better.

My house is far cooler than the sorts of new build rabbit hutches around. I could happily stay here, all nice and cool, and not go to work. (which by the way is improving, at least for me it is anyway)

I sat outside in the sun for about ten minutes today, before I had to move into the shade.

Other countries work around the weather. They have siestas. They get up early and go to bed late but in the middle, they sleep.

Why can't we work with the weather? Why can't we be flexible? It isn't natural...

I Wish for Balance

Oops! Forgot to add this.... Shows how awake I was this morning.

Following on from lasts nights post, today's wish theme fits perfectly... I wish to nurture balance in my life. Blogging has widened my life and bought so many good things in but has started to take over to the detriment of many of the things has bought into my life....

I want to start working towards balance....

I don't want to spend all evening every evening trawling through the blogs I follow. I want to have fun! I want to create and meditate and maybe if I have to, do some housework. I want to walk the dog somewhere beautiful (as long as it isn't too hot). If I am watching a film, I would like to watch it and not be blogging over the top...