One of the comforts of being confined to the house is that I can take the time to awake slowly, and to linger over my early morning tea.
Instead of jumping out of bed on a Sunday morning at 08:00, preparing to meet up with my old friend Anne in a breakfast-serving restaurant, I dreamily awake to the light of my newly acquired Teasmade and the wireless.
Aside from serving freshly brewed tea, the Teasmade also provides a mellow, gentle wake-up light. Not the harsh, clinical, attention-grabbing white light that a modern appliance has, and that is so detrimental to the gradual adjustment of the mind to a state of alertness.
Once sufficiently awake to stumble to the Teasmade to snatch the teapot and return to the warm duvet, I can pour myself a cup with only one arm outside of the duvet - because in wise anticipation of the early morning routine, I prepared a little tray the night before beside my bed.
While slowly sipping my tea, my gaze moves around the room. I am an unashamed materialist, and take great joy in looking at beautiful things, advantageously placed. So the view from my pillow, the things I see first thing in the morning, matters a great deal to me, and I have taken some pains to insure that the view is pleasant and comforting.
The wall opposite my pillow is decorated with items that evoke happy memories of people and places. The curtains, Compton by William Morris, filter the morning sun into a warm subdued light. I tend to draw them when fetching the teapot, just so I can look at the stained glass hanging pictures there - especially the daffodil one always makes me smile.
I wish I had one of a dandelion, which is my favourite flower, but well, one can't have everything. You know the sort of dandelion I mean? Not the clock artists are so fond of depicting! No, the dandelion I love is in full flower, sunshine yellow, set off by its dark green leaves, surrounded by the blades of a meadow, in various lighter shades of green. What could be more beautiful? I would give such a stained glass picture to everyone I know, if they existed and I had the money.
Once snuggled back under the cover, my eyes linger on the tea cup. When the sale of Teasmades was at its height, and millions were sold every year, one could have the luxury option, which included a pair of Royal Albert cups. The cups were in a light blue pattern, not particularly attractive, so I decided to use my Old Country Roses instead. I started out using my regular cups, but got tired of the constant refills - you really can't fit a lot of tea into one of those! So I invested in a breakfast cup in the same pattern. Hard to come by, but oh so worth it! The last thing you want when hiding under a warm duvet is having to expose your right arm more than necessary to do a refill!
On the cup's saucer rests a silver-plated spoon, of the pattern my parents had. I recently came across a set of spoons and cake forks in that pattern, and since I didn't have any cake forks in Hanoverian Rat-tail, my regular silver flatware, I bought the set. Now one spoon always sits on my early morning tea cup, and I never fail to admire it, and think of my Mother who died so long ago.
After the first cup - my Teasmade produces two breakfast sized cups - my gaze wanders further afield. I admire again the clock I inherited when my Father died. Four weeks after the funeral I was downstairs making myself a cup of tea - this was before my halcyon days of Teasmade luxury had arrived - and I heard an almightly crash. I rushed upstairs, and found that the clock had fallen from the wall and crashed to the floor, a fall of six feet. That day would have been my Father's 84th birthday - I refuse to speculate on the spiritual significance of this!
Requesting the help of some local repair experts I was quoted such ludicrous sums that I decided to fix the clock myself as best I could. I had never done that before, but to my great surprise I somehow managed it. I bought spare parts, bent dented pieces back into shape, and a certain amount of glue was judiciously applied. That was more than five years ago, and I am happy to report that the clock still works. It has become a little peculiar, to be sure - for example it always chimes one bong less that it should for the hour - but I am not bothered. It works, and I can once more hear the sound that accompanied my childhood.
There are other favourites, of course, but I am loathe to bother my readers with reminiscences that are of value only to myself. I have annotated the pictures below, to give a little flavour of them.
The point of this blog post is, try to arrange your life as pleasantly as you can possibly contrive, so that from first thing in the morning to last thing at night you are surrounded by beauty and lovely mementos.
At times when you don't have access to other humans to provide comfort and happiness, you can at least evoke the pleasant memories of the past.
Happy Sunday!
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| View when I wake up |
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| Right above my head |
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| Pulling back the bed curtain a little |
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| ....and a little more |
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| First cup of tea of the day |
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| The Teasmade casts a mellow light - my camera isn't good at depicting mellow lights, so I leave the effect to your imagination. Take my word for it, it is comforting and soothing. There is an alarm as well, but the sound is so industrial that I hardly ever use. How can the designers who installed such a lovely light used such a horrific alarm noise? |
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| The parental clock, still going strong |
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| My favourite painting, which I painted after my Mother died. The white blob in the middle of the sea is a bit of missing paint, if the oil paints I stored in my attic haven't dried up I shall repair it soon. |
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| Biscuit barrel on top of a handkerchief box. Both come in very handy at times! |
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| Photoprint of la Bourboule, bought by an American soldier, playing tourist in France after WWI. He returned to the Midwest with it, and after he died I found it on Ebay. It shows the hotel I always stay in!!! The glider on top is my addition. |
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| An old shaving mirror - the ledge folds up for easy transport. The dove is carved from myrtlewood, which is unique to Oregon and North California. In the mirror I can see a corner of a painting my Father gave me, a copy of Spitzweg's Der Buecherwurm. It depicts a man standing on a ladder in front of floor to ceiling book shelves - Heaven! |
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| I have a little collection of books about gliders and La Bourboule. The little wooden shrine contains the mortal remains of Eric, my lost tooth. I hope he won't be joined by others any time soon!!! |
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| Royal Albert Old Country Rose breakfast cup - isn't that a nice way to have the first cup in the morning? |
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| The Spoon - beautifully elegant, yet simple - perfect. |
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| The candle-holder is one of the few things I own that belonged to my paternal grandfather. |
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| My JoJo. I lost him when I was 17 in unfortunate circumstances, and looked for a replacement every since. Finally, after 42 years of patiently searching for him the world over, I found him again. To be sure this one is in much better condition, and still has his ears - I had ripped off the ones of the original JoJo early on while a toddler - but he is still a great comfort to me. He illustrates that all things will come to you if you are prepared to be patient, and never stop looking. |
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| The little bookcase that I bought to put the Teasmade on. Notice the book by Hans Kueng? My Mother read his books, and we had many a heated argument about them. I found it in the only remaining Christian bookshop in Oxford. |
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| Same bookcase, different shelf. This one houses my Nesthaekchen collection, a very popular set of children's books from the 1920s onwards. The author Else Ury ended up in a KZ. I had a very interesting discussion with my Father about it when her biography came out. The police officer who arrested her had asked for her autograph only a few years before. |
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| The stained glass pictures in my bedroom window |
