here's to another year....

I think I’ve cracked the secret to happiness. Well, a small part of it anyway.  A tiny part really.... but a part nonetheless.

It’s a secret that comes in two parts, but I didn’t realise until I put them together how powerful a force for good they really were. The first part I put into place several months ago, but I only got hold of the second part, completely independently, on Saturday afternoon…. But as soon as I put the two pieces together, it all very quickly clicked into place, and I’ve been experiencing a zen-like calm ever since.

As I’m a generous sort, I’ll share so that you too, dear reader, can benefit from this serendipitous discovery.

The first piece of the puzzle was the impulse purchase of a little plastic dish in the shape of the tea pot. I saw it in the Co-Op when I was in there for some entirely mundane reason or another. I saw it at the grand price of something like £1 and immediately saw the soothing balm it could pour onto all my kitchen troubles. You see, I generally make tea on a mug by mug basis, dunking the tea bag directly into the cup next to the kettle. This works well enough, but the problem is that I then have to walk across the kitchen to the bin with a hot, spent tea bag balanced on a spoon. It’s all highly unsatisfactory. With the addition of a little plastic dish in the shape of a tea pot, placed carefully next to the kettle, this problem immediately disappeared. Yes, alright, so I have a stack of dried up, used teabags next to the kettle… but I can live with that.

For a while, that was enough, but on Saturday, the second piece of the puzzle arrived to make my life practically complete: a little set of tongs with plastic squeezers in the shape of hands. The little plastic dish in the shape of a tea pot is great, but there’s still that awkward moment when you lift the burning hot tea bag out of the mug and have to use your fingers to squeeze it out against the teaspoon to wring it out before transferring it to the little plastic dish in the shape of a teapot. Ha! Not any more, my friends, because now I have a little set of tongs with plastic squeezers in the shape of hands to wring out my teabags (and if, I feel so inclined, to hold my biscuit for a more thorough dunking experience)!

Life, my friends, is good.

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In other news, I turn 38 on Wednesday and will be spending the next few days in London to celebrate. We’re having lunch at Albert Roux and Michel Roux Jr’s restaurant at the Landau; we’re going to watch Graham Linehan’s adaptation of “The Ladykillers” at the Gielgud theatre (starring Peter Capaldi); we’ve tickets to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum; we’re going to catch up with some friends and maybe buy a hat…. It’s all good.

See you on the other side.