M.C. Steep's Blog, page 14

Answer to Armageddon

Not to be repetitive, but today’s tea is another herbal tisane. We went and cross-referenced after yesterday, and of seventeen teas, six have been non-herbal, which strikes us as a curious balance, considering the in-store selection. And while we like herbal tea fine, we’re officially asking for advice. Because we’ve done what it says on the tin. We’ve let the tea sit for ten minutes. We’ve spooned it one per person and one for the pot into the infuser. We’ve all but stuck a thermometer in the water to check it’s exactly so many degrees before boiling and it never, ever steeps adequately. Not with a fox, not in a box, nor on a train, plane or automobile. So, what are we doing wrong, internet? What do we have to do to get herbal tea from this calendar at a strength above anaemic?

Twenty minutes into tea-drinking we got a cup that was nicely pink (there’s hibiscus and rose in the mix) and not overly sweet. In fact, of the herbals we’ve sampled this month, Tulsi Tranquility is definitely a favourite. We’d say its tranquility in a cup, but quite frankly that’s all tea, any tea, any time of day.

It’s something we’ve been trying to explain to the people behind this calendar for ages. Tea doesn’t need to keep up with trends, bustle and blether. The whole point is that everything stops for tea. The joy of this calendar is that every day we must take twenty minutes out to not only make a pot but mull it over and take time out from more pressing considerations. It’s not a showy Advent discipline, but it’s soothing, and that’s tea at its level best.

Of course, we spoiled it all today by then haring off for the last dance of the month. It was our Tuesday social group wrapping up for the season, so there was a seven-couple dance (it was chaos), a formation called a Reverse Snowball Grand Chain (it was somehow short two bars in the brief, cue more chaos) and a whole lot of hobnobbing over biscuits. With tea, obviously. Because if you aren’t dancing nothing else is so readily unifying.

With that in mind, here’s a poem about the land just how vital it really is to the running of the universe.

Alternative Anthem

John Agard

Put the kettle on

Put the kettle on

Is the British answer

to Armageddon

Never mind taxes rise

Never mind trains are late

One thing you can be sure of

and that’s the kettle, mate.

It’s not whether you lose

It’s not whether you win

It’s whether or not

you’ve plugged the kettle in.

May the kettle ever hiss

May the kettle ever steam

It is the engine

that drives our nation’s dream.

Long live the kettle

that rules over us

May it be limescale free

and may it never rust.

Sing it on the beaches

Sing it from the housetops

The sun may set on empire

but the kettle never stops.

 

What do you think? Does the Brexit plan involve tea? Is that the thing they were missing? Crucially; has anyone told Downing St. lately that the answer to the vexed issue is in the teapot? Bet you Larry the Cat has at least tried. Tea all round it is. See you tomorrow – odds on with another herbal tea. But no bother, eh, so long as it averts Armageddon.

Experiments in Tea Drinking (With Apologies to Dachshunds)

We made a proper study of today’s tea for you. S’mores Chai is a pu’ehr blend with chocolate lacing it for good measure. The name was sufficiently confusing that we tried it with milk and sugar on the second cup; chai is just about the one tea that benefits from being milked and sweetened if you know how. So, we find, do chocolate teas, because the creaminess of the dairy works well with the chocolate pieces.

Not so this tea, which is much better plain. It’s not so much chocolatey (in spite of what it says on the tin) as it is spiced; there’s lots of cinnamon in there, and it risks being overwhelmed by milk. Mind, the sugar reemphasised it nicely, so while it doesn’t need it, it’s certainly a tea that might benefit from a bit of extra sweetness. And really, by the point you’re sitting down to a cup of pu’erh with honest-to-goddess pieces of marshmallow in the blend, is anyone keeping track of calories? Maybe that’s a quirk of ours. We never bother with hot chocolate either; we figure there’s no point in doing the thing by halves and make it properly rich. A similar policy works well with this tea, and you can bet we’ll be circling back to it.

Of course, the whole leisurely tea process offended the Dawlish Dachshunds, not least because they didn’t get to sample any. Honestly, they really do love chocolate! They think. They dream. They’ve never been allowed to sample any. So we’re making it up to them now with this charming poem dedicated to Dachshunds everywhere. And you thought we’d used up the Dachshund poetry quota!

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Dachshunds

William J. Smith

The Dachshund leads a quiet life

Not far above the ground;

He takes an elongated wife,

They travel all around.

They leave the lighted metropole;

Nor turn to look behind

Upon the headlands of the soul,

The tundras of the mind.

They climb together through the dusk

To ask the Lost-and-Found

For information on the stars

Not far above the ground.

The Dachshunds seem to journey on:

And following them, I

Take up my monocle, the Moon,

And gaze into the sky.

Pursuing them with comic art

Beyond the cosmic goal,

I see the whole within the part,

The part within the whole;

See planets wheeling overhead,

Mysterious and slow,

While morning buckles on his red,

And on the Dachshunds go.

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Z is for Zest, Ginger and Spice!

Rejoice! This week in Advent is sponsored by the Doors Wide Open Policy; we leave your doors open and watch as all the heat exits them pursued by shivering congregants! Coming to a church near you sharpish. It’s doing double duty with the perennial classic O Antiphons Inc, and honestly, what is it about high Anglicanism in Canada that vetoes all sequencing hymns not heavily mired in plainchant. Other churches can and do use other stuff – we’ve sung at them. Lots. Finally, there’s an honourable mention to Canadian-Grade Winter Coats, guaranteed to keep you warm whether you face subarctic weather or a failure in the central heating system. They’re marketing a new line in choral cassocks, so conductors, take note.

Okay, so church was freezing.  And the doors were inexplicably open, and the heating system was (as ever as per the end of Advent) protesting the apocalypse or something. Also, the sermon was meandering and underwhelming but since we aren’t in the business of outperforming the priest with sermons, we try not to cast that stone. Besides, the the rose vestments were out, the music was good, and the tea at the Agape was hot. (It isn’t always, cf last Christmas morning. We suspect it was a ploy to get shot of us.)

Today’s tea is another rooibos. It’s called Super Ginger and bills itself as being spicy, sweet, and comforting. We don’t know about sweet – has anyone ever labelled ginger sweet ? – but we’ll vouch for the other two.

Mind, if you don’t like ginger, there’s no salvaging this tea for you. We do, and we think that it’s the perfect compliment to the already zingy rooibos. There’s not really a lot to dissect with this one though, because it does what it says on the tin. It’s gingery in spades. Did our diatribe about the spontaneous inclusion of raisins get through to someone? We’re adding it to the list of things to rejoice about anyway.

And while we do that, here’s a poem for your Gaudete Sunday. It’s fun, playful, and irreverent. As ginger and zing go, you don’t do much better than Chesterton’s wit as displayed here.

Variations of an Air 

G.K. Chesterton

Composed on Having to Appear in a Pageant as Old King Cole

Old King Cole was a merry old soul,

And a merry old soul was he;

He called for his pipe,

He called for his bowl,

And he called for his fiddlers three.

after Lord Tennyson

Cole, that unwearied prince of Colchester,

Growing more gay with age and with long days

Deeper in laughter and desire of life

As that Virginian climber on our walls

Flames scarlet with the fading of the year;

Called for his wassail and that other weed

Virginian also, from the western woods

Where English Raleigh checked the boast of Spain,

And lighting joy with joy, and piling up

Pleasure as crown for pleasure, bade me bring

Those three, the minstrels whose emblazoned coats

Shone with the oyster-shells of Colchester;

And these three played, and playing grew more fain

Of mirth and music; till the heathen came

And the King slept beside the northern sea.

after Swinburne

In the time of old sin without sadness

And golden with wastage of gold

Like the gods that grow old in their gladness

Was the king that was glad, growing old:

And with sound of loud lyres from his palace

The voice of his oracles spoke,

And the lips that were red from his chalice

Were splendid with smoke.

When the weed was as flame for a token

And the wine was as blood for a sign;

And upheld in his hands and unbroken

The fountains of fire and of wine.

And a song without speech, without singer,

Stung the soul of a thousand in three

As the flesh of the earth has to sting her,

The soul of the sea.

after Robert Browning

Who smoke-snorts toasts o’ My Lady Nicotine,

Kicks stuffing out of Pussyfoot, bids his trio

Stick up their Stradivarii (that’s the plural

Or near enough, my fatheads; nimium

Vicina Cremonce; that’s a bit too near.)

Is there some stockfish fails to understand?

Catch hold o’ the notion, bellow and blurt back “Cole”?

Must I bawl lessons from a horn-book, howl,

Cat-call the cat-gut “fiddles”? Fiddlesticks!

after W.B. Yeats

Of an old King in a story

From the grey sea-folk I have heard

Whose heart was no more broken

Than the wings of a bird.

As soon as the moon was silver

And the thin stars began,

He took his pipe and his tankard,

Like an old peasant man.

And three tall shadows were with him

And came at his command;

And played before him for ever

The fiddles of fairyland.

And he died in the young summer

Of the world’s desire;

Before our hearts were broken

Like sticks in a fire.

after Walt Whitman

Me clairvoyant,

Me conscious of you, old camarado,

Needing no telescope, lorgnette, field-glass, opera-glass, myopic pince-nez,

Me piercing two thousand years with eye naked and not ashamed;

The crown cannot hide you from me,

Musty old feudal-heraldic trappings cannot hide you from me,

I perceive that you drink.

(I am drinking with you. I am as drunk as you are.)

I see you are inhaling tobacco, puffing, smoking, spitting

(I do not object to your spitting),

You prophetic of American largeness,

You anticipating the broad masculine manners of these States;

I see in you also there are movements, tremors, tears, desire for the melodious,

I salute your three violinists, endlessly making vibrations,

Rigid, relentless, capable of going on for ever;

They play my accompaniment; but I shall take no notice of any accompaniment;

I myself am a complete orchestra.

So long.

There’s nothing like a good literary joke, is there? Spare a thought for it next time the Doors Wide Open Policy and failing heating systems get a hold of your church. But if that doesn’t work for you, we’ll leave you with our pet Gaudete Sunday Anthem. Enjoy! And rejoice greatly!

Here’s Tae Us

It was our Christmas Ball tonight. Terribly grand, you know, the Scottish Country Dance Christmas Ball, with lots of complicated footwork and once figures.

Actually, the occasion is billed as the Family Dance, and never was a program more accessible. We’d walked quite a lot of it before in social groups, but you don’t get much more beginner-friendly than the dance selections we had tonight.

Even so, every year we make mention of this ball, and every year someone says ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ Well, tonight you’re getting a lesson, because us Scottish Country Dancers like our rhymes.

For instance, when dancing the poussette, the adage is:

Away from the centre, quarter turn,

Up or down, quarter turn;

Into the centre, halfway round,

Fall back, fall back.

And here, for reference, is the poussette, danced beautifully by more elegant people than us.

 

Remember, Away from the centre, quarter turn…

You watch even the experienced dancers still reciting it to one another as they go. We had a wonderful teacher who used to joke that they’d inscribe it on her headstone someday. (They probably will; she dances more than she doesn’t.)

Meanwhile, to dance crossover reels – that’s a reel of three on the opposite side of the set – the rhyme goes:

Ones dance over to begin,

Twos dance out,

And threes dace in.

As for the rest of it, you mostly grab the hands that get offered to you, keep alert to people advancing towards you, and it all sort of muddles out. Occasionally, when it’s done very well, it looks elegant while you’re at it. We’re working on that bit.

Currently we’re unwinding to today’s tea. It’s another tisane, and we’re not taking notes here, but surely there have been more herbal teas than anything else in this calendar? Readers at home, what do you think? This one it White Cranberry, wherein white chocolate meets dried cranberry, apple, raisins and papaya. The cat mug is once again earning it’s keep, now we’ve cracked how to use it without being scalded, and yields up a tea that is surprisingly tropical tasting. We’d blame the papaya, except we couldn’t actually taste it in the cup. The cranberry dominates, as you’d expect, while the white chocolate gives it a burst of sweetness.

The apple tempers both a bit, though we’re not sure the raisins come through. Honestly, there must be raisins in every second tea we sample, and we’re not clear why, because they really don’t steep well. Anyone who has ever soaked raisins in hot water for baking will probably understand this; not for nothing you have to add other stuff to a fruitcake to draw out their flavour!

So that’s tea and two wee verses for you, tonight. But the traditional way to close out a dance is with Burns. Specifically Auld Lang Syne. Only that’s for New Year, and that’s still a ways off. So instead, have Green Grow the Rashes, O. It makes for a lovely strathspey, but doubles as an equally enjoyable read – with or without tea.

Green Grow the Rashes, O

Robert Burns

Chor. – Green grow the rashes, O;

Green grow the rashes, O;

The sweetest hours that e’er I spend,

Are spent amang the lasses, O.

There’s nought but care on ev’ryy han’,

In ev’ry hour that passes, O:

What signifies the life o’ man,

An’ ‘there na for the lasses, O.

Green grow&c.

The war’ly race may riches chase,

An’ riches still may fly them, O:

An’ tho’ at last they catch them fast,

Their hearts can ne’re enjoy them, O.

Green grow &c.

But gie me a canine hour at at e’en,

My arms about my dearie, O;

An’ war’ly cares, an’ war’ly men,

May a’ gae tapsalteerie, O!

Green grow &c.  

For you sae douce, ye sneer at this;

Ye’re nought but senseless asses, O:

The wisest man the warl’ e’er saw,

He dearly lov’d the lasses, O.

Green grow, &c.

Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears

Her noblest works she classes, O:

Her prentice hand she try’d on man,

And then she made the lasses, O.

Green grow, &c.

Hopefully you have less trouble with the Scotts than did the glaikit computer, which made a braw, effort to translate it into garden-variety English. You, naturally, not being robotic, will notice it does that anyway on the last verse, spontaneously switching to High English instead of Scotts vernacular. The genius of Burns is arguably how fluidly he mixes both.

We’ll send you off now to dance the hours away as per yet another rhyme, or maybe just enjoy oddly tropical tea. Until tomorrow,



Here’s tae us!

Wha’s like us?

Gey few, and they’re a’ deid!

Tea for a Winter Night

We opened the Advent calendar to an orange tea packet today, prompting the revelation that in spite of all these herbals, blacks and that one oolong, we hadn’t yet had a rooibos tea. There’s still time for this to all balance out, but it’s a glance we wouldn’t mind seeing redressed going forward.

Today’s rooibos is Alpine Punch, a staple of ours. It’s flavoured with almonds and brings back memories of damp, Scottish afternoons when we drank it to stave off the cold and put some heat back into our fingers. The almonds are a lovely compliment to the rooibos and give the tea a toasted flavour that tastes glorious.

To go with it, have a glorious poem by Hardy. We know, we know, we’ve used it before. But every Advent calendar has that one, recurrent thing. In children’s calendars its the St Nicholas, but it might be a particular chocolate, or tea, or, as in this instance, that one beloved poem. We’re writing by grey, wintery light, and it elevates the atmosphere like nothing else. Without further ado, here’s The Darkling Thrush.

The Darkling Thrush

Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
      The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
      Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
      Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be

The Century’s corpse outlet,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Wash shrunken, hard and dry,

And every creature upon earth

Seemed desolate as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimeted;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

With blast-beruffeld plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolling

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

This happy good-night air,

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,

And I was unaware.

And remember, should you be overtaken by whimsy, pick a favourite hymn tune and set it to music. The thrush would almost certainly appreciate it.

Apologies and Corrections

We’v resurrected the feline mug this evening, with apologies, America. It turns out it hales from Germany after all, which goes a long way to explain the glass shell. It’s still true about the waste of perfectly good tea, though, and our various misadventures in ordering it.

Tonight’s cup is called Sunny C, in what we assume is another terrible play on words by way of a nod to the orange thing that was Sunny D(elight). Really, leave the puns to dads and uncles, Calendar. Anyway, like that vaguely orange-adjacent drink, this too purports to be full of oranges and citrus vitamin stuff. It certainly smells of it. So why conjure images of imitation orange juice?

(It’s probably a terribly clever reference to sun and vitamin C we’ve missed. Forgive us. And do explain if so minded.)

Anyway, it tastes of citrus, sort of like Lemsip if you swap the lemon for orange and take out the nasty medicinal stuff. Though we want it on record we’re great fans of Lemsip and would never willingly malign it. It even beats out Lemsip for taste; hot orange is a fruit we appreciate when steeped in tea. It does well in oolong, too.

For you North American readers who’ve never had the good fortune to be rescued by Lemsip, apologies. We’ve been fixed Britain-ward all day because of the election. We helped hang parliament once, and we cast an opinion on Scottish Independence, and also Brexit.

We did not, by the by, vote Brexit. But we got our way about Independence, so figure the perils of democracy mean something had to give somewhere down the line. But you didn’t come here for our thoughts on Brexit and we didn’t get to vote Jim Hacker into parliament. Probably just as well since we hear Sir Humphrey has since been elected to the House of Lords. Anyone know where Bernard ended up?

There is, and we know because we looked, poetry out there on Brexit and politics generally. Some of it is even darkly funny. We’ll let you hunt it down if you’re so minded. Instead, here’s something short, sweet, and fruity to go with the tea. It even purports to be an apology, and really, wherever you fall on this thing, one must be due from all sides by now. We submit various parties trade them in-between negotiating terms of this deal that’s supposed to be happening. But until then, have some poetry.

This is Just to Say

William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


Enjoy the plums. We’re sticking with the citrusy herbal tisane over here in Narnia, oh, until March or so.

Dance the Hours Away

Tonight our local social group for the RCSDS (that’s the Royal Scottish Country Dancing Society to the unfamiliar) hosts its 40th anniversary celebration. Clearly it’s a bit of a week for parties. Strictly speaking, we’re imperfect dancers with wobbly timing, but it’s our Christmas send-off before the ball, so we’ll be going and, as is writ in The Dashing White Sergeant, we’ll dance the night away.

In preparation we’ve made up a pot of today’s tea. Remember we said there were herbals we were partial to? This is one of them. It’s called Caramel Shortbread and given our affinity for Millionaire’s Shortbread, this is a combination of things that was always going to go well. It smells strongly of caramel, and while the colour never gets dark, it shouldn’t, being herbal. And unlike other tisanes this calendar has had us trial, it comes to a healthy strength in decent time. Better still, the caramel gives it a nice taste, and infills some of the grounding you would typically get from a more full-bodied tea. It blends nicely with the raisins and apples, and really does taste surprisingly like Millionaire’s Shortbread in a cup. This is no bad thing.

But soon we’ll be off dancing, where it’s fairly good odds someone has actually made up Millionaire’s Shortbread for the occasion. (The RSCDS here is terribly proud of its roots.) And talking of occasions, here’s one of Pat Batt’s wee poetical gems about dancing. Here’s hoping our evening turns out better than her speaker’s! Mind you, since Scottish Country Dance is the elegant cousin to the ceilidh, that’s a pretty conservative bet. Especially since we’ve never met friendlier people.

The Ceilidh

Pat Batt, 1992

I’m supposed to run a Ceilidh

For our next St. Andrew’s night –

But I’m in a deep depression

For the future’s far from bright.Our gallant Demonstration Team

Is now reduced to five –

Fiona’s in Australia

And Ann’s run off with Clive.

John could do a sword dance

Or perhaps a Highland Fling –

But he will do it in trousers,

Which isn’t quite the thing.

And Ian plays the bagpipes –

He plays them fairly well –

But always full fortissimo,

And indoors that’s sheer Hell!

Mrs Gertrude Macintosh –

Our President’s close friend –

She’s bound to play that waltz in C

That never seems to end.

The vicar’s daughters – Faith and Hope

Are keen to do a turn –

They’ve started ballet classes

And they’ve got a lot to learn!

Their mother plays the cello

And makes a nasty sound

Whilst her offspring, like young kangaroos

Leap round – and round – and round.

And that woman who does monologues

(She looks a bit like me) –

There’s no way you can stop her

As far as I can see.

They say it’s only jolly fun –

It’s more than I can bear,

And the only way to dodge it

Is to make sure I’m elsewhere.

I know – I’ll join the navy

Seasick and homesick daily –

I might loathe every minute,

But at least I’ll miss the Ceilidh!

 

N.B. We happen to love a good ceilidh. In fact, in missing them we stumbled into the RSCDS thinking they were the same. They are not. But we tell you what; she’s not wrong about indoor bagpipes!

Lessons in Tea Making

Sharp-eyed blog viewers will notice we’re trailing a new teacup this evening. It’s late and we don’t really have the time for our normal pot of tea; it’s December, stuff happens and generally things conspire to get in the way. Tonight it was a retirement-cum-christmas party. Tomorrow it will be dancing. But we must have our tea, so we’re finally christening this mug, which, strange to say came from the same friend abroad as last night’s Delightful Dachshund parcel.

It comes with an inbuilt, good-sized inbuilt infuser. The infuser is shaped like a dead fish, naturally, which makes sense when you realise the mug proper resembles a cat. And for a bitty infuser, it crams an awful lot of tea into it. Awkwardly, though, the glass this mug is made of isn’t insulated, and the lid traps the heat…well, it traps it in the heat-conducting glass.  Take off the lid, say you sensible listeners. But then out goes the infuser. To have tea, hot water or scalded hands; these are the questions.

Now, the friend is German, and we’ve had my share of tea in lemonade glasses served up to us in Germany, but this one is on you, America. We know this because we met her shortly after she picked up the mug in some stateside gift shop or other during a rare in-person convening of our like minds. We’d be surprised but, and we say this with great affection, nowhere has ever so monumentally misunderstood our tea orders as America. Historically they have neglected to bring us milk. Or they have taken ‘black tea’ to mean tea without milk; they lovingly tucked the teabag into the cup, not the pot (where folks, we tell you it cannot steep). Most recently, stuck us in a hotel room plus a posh coffee machine but lacking a kettle. If you’ve never tried making tea in a posh, futuristic coffee machine, let us save you the bother; it produces a cup of tea that tastes like coffee.

So, a heat-conducting cat shaped mug? From the place that so (in?)famously threw a lot of tea in the water to make a point all those years ago, it feels par for the course. PMind you, it’s a very sweet mug. And it’s sort of starting to infuse the tea as we type.

[image error]Tea? Or hot water aspiring to be tea?

 

And what, you ask, after all that, is the tea? It’s a black tea called Candy Cane Crush. It’s an old favourite of the Calendar, and of ours, too. We’re not typically people who favour chocolate in tea, but here it works well with the peppermint. It gives the tea a creaminess at full strength that makes it taste a bit like a peppermint cream in the best possible way. And while we can, it turns out, write small essays on the hazards of glass mugs and their cat-shaped lids, you will never hear a word against the peppermint cream from us. In a cup this anaemic (and see the above photo for reference) its more peppermint cream than it is tea, but in a good-sized infuser with space for the leaves to expand, it gets a nice balance from the underlying black tea blend.

After all that, here’s lessons in tea making from a man who knows what he’s on about. We’ve dipped back into the archive for it, but can we help it if we keep having to educate the world on how to steep a cup of tea?!

Lessons in Tea Making 

Kenny Knight, from Ten poems about Tea

When I first learnt to

Pour tea in Honicknowle

In those dark old days

Before central heating

Closed down open fireplaces

And lights went out in coal mines

And chimpanzees hadn’t yet

Made their debuts on television

And two sugars

Was the national average

And the teapot was the centre

Of the known universe

And the solar system

Wasn’t much on anyone’s mind

And the sun was this yellow

Thing that just warmed the air

And anthropology’s study

Of domestic history hadn’t

Quite reached the evolutionary

Breakthrough of the tea-bag

And the kettle was on

In the kitchen of number

Thirty two Chatsworth Gardens

Where my father after slurping

Another saucer dry would ask

In a smoke-frog voice for

Another cup of microcosm

While outside the universe blazed

Like a hundred towns

On a sky of smooth black lino

And my father with tobacco

Stained fingers would dunk biscuits

And in the process spill tiny drops

Of Ceylon and India

Ode to the Dachshund

It was all things Dachshund today thanks to a surprise parcel from a friend across the water. Specifically, she billed it the Delightful Dachshund Parcel.

 

Miss Marschallin Cat is guarding it now, lest Dachshunds get any ideas about their place in the hierarchy. (They are minions.) Still, we thought we’d try and find a poem for them, if we could.

But just before that, a bit about the tea. It’s white and called Pomograteful, because some ill-advised person let the marketing people, or the naming people, or whatever people get to name these things, have it away with the puns. Calendar, you are a lovely Advent Calendar but leave the terrible puns to our unsuspecting relatives, will you?

Anyway, if you hadn’t put it together, it’s a pomegranate and white tea  blend that makes for a low-affine, sweet desert tea. The sort we’d save up for Lent when we’ve sworn off sweet things but still want a bit more after supper. The pomegranate gives the tea a spectacular colour and also zest – and it smells divine. What’s not to love?

We’re being purred at and waltzed on and gently bunted, which is typically our cue to go do the Boring Lying Down Thing from Miss Marchallin. You know the one; you burrow under lots of lovely blankies and lie perfectly still while the cat sits on you. It also means we’ve nattered too long about something other than Herself. But we live dangerously here at Chorister at Home, so before we go, have a poem about Dachshunds. And you thought we’d never find one didn’t you? Well, we did  – but we wouldn’t want Her Nibs to find out. So this is between us, the blog and some metaphorical bedpost, yeah?

The Dachshund Speaks 

Morgan Dennis, 1947

Because I waddle when I walk,

Should this give rise to silly talk

That I’m ungainly?  What’s ungainly?

I’m really rather graceful – mainly.

The experts have been known to state

That there’s a twinkle in our gait.

One said “They have a clumsy grace,”

Which after all is no disgrace.

My funny features may abound;

Short legs, long body, low-to-ground,

But I’m about the perfect pal,

For man or woman, boy or gal.

I’m gentle, very playful, kind,

I housebreak fast, ’cause I’m refined.

I’m smart but never sly or foxy –

No, do not underrate the dachsie!

 

Ungainly? Never! We give you the very model of dachshunds major generals…who may just have missed that memo about housebreaking fast. But who’s keeping track? Anyway, they are very definitely, absolutely, completely and utterly refined.

 

 

See? Seriously refined. Okay, look, maybe the jury’s out on that too. Maybe. But there is no contesting the loveability of a Dachshund. Trust us – we’d know.

Advent II: The Record of John

Advent II is all about John, the record of, crying on Jordan’s banks, etc, etc. Or it is as per our music schedule today. Though we have it on good authority that week two of Advent is actually sponsored by Frobisher Bay; the only winter-adjacent folksong about whaling to go masquerading as a Christmas carol this afternoon. (They’re working on a better tag line.) Note, we’re not complaining. We have great affection for Frobisher Bay, beloved of the St Andrews Madrigal Group forever and ever, world without end. Amen. Or it was when we were attending their concerts.

If you don’t know what we’re nattering at you about, you’re in for a treat. You can listen below, and we envy you hearing it for the first time!

 

 

On the subject of real treats, the calendar gave us one today in the shape of Cream of Earl Grey. We aren’t wild fans of garden variety Earl Grey (it tastes of soap!) but we love this particular blend. It’s creamier and smoother than ordinary Earl Grey and there’s less bergamot. A bit of milk can bring out the creaminess, but we like it black to better luxuriate in the flavours of the tea. We’ve even stockpiled a bit extra for breakfast tomorrow, we like it that much.

But we said today was all about John, and notionally, it is. As per certain schools of thought, each Advent Candle gets a designated theme, and Advent II is almost always John (three is almost always Mary, unless you have deferred John until Gaudete Sunday – but that gets complicated fast). We don’t do candles over on Huron St but we do do good music, and today’s lot included an old favourite that gets nicely reduced to nonsense here.

We’ve said before all good faith needs a bit of levity mixed in, so here’s On Jordan’s Banks the Baptist Cries….with emendations.

On Jordan’s Bank, the Baptists cry.

If I was Baptist, so would I,

They drink no beer, they have no fun,

I’m glad that I’m an Anglican.

This is what choristers resort to when they are made to sing multiple Advent carol services, nine lessons and late masses, if you were curious. And lest you worry we discriminate, this is coming to you from a teetotal Anglo-Catholic, so it’s odds on that somewhere there are indeed gin-drinking, fun-loving baptists. We hazard we even know one or two.

But from the ridiculous to the sublime, here’s a pet Advent Anthem to leave you with. It, too, is about John, and is our go-to example of what you miss out on if you only play Christmas music through December.