relaxing by the power of steam

Coffee is obviousy the best drink in the world apart from cold water on a hot day, really cold milk or orange-and-grapefruit juice so cold there are little bits of ice in it (and The Ultimate Refreshing Drink, a theoretical slightly soupy-textured lightly-flavoured chilled refreshment of which I have often dreamed but never managed to pin down)...

Coffee is obviously the best hot drink in the world apart from hot chocolate when you're really tired and sleepy...

Coffee is obviously one of the best hot drinks in the world but there are times when it isn't really appropriate. Nine o'clock in the evening after a longish day when one has already drunk two 0.6l flasksworth is perhaps one of those times. I never really drank tea as a child and youth though I did acquire a brief taste for a nice large pot of lovely strong Yorkshire-brand tea (made in one of those cheap and cheerful metal service-station-style teapots) during early 1998. I think for some reason the lighting in the kitchen of the flat I lived in at the time somehow lent itself to tea-accompanied reading. A few years ago I chanced upon nettle-flavour tea and have since gone through a few cycles of that in the evenings when it's been too late for coffee. Last week I finished off a three-month-old packet which had lost a little taste so tonight marked the opening of a nice tasty fresh packet. Despite smelling like three-day-old mown grass in the bag it's quite pleasant to drink and by all accounts not unhealthy in any perceptible way. I shall make another mug (I'd been looking for a smaller-opening-than-base design mug for ages for improved stability and reduced surface-area-derived heat loss for ages and found this in Magna Plaza in Amsterdam six years ago) then have a nice relaxing game of Portal before a nice long weekend-sleep.

Pleasant weekends to you all.