Productive Tea

In my head January is all about new beginnings, being very industrious and working away to ensure that come the start of the tourist season I am poised, ready with a large stash of lovely things ready to sell.

The fact is that our caravan is damp, a bit moldy and that romantic prospect of tucking up cosy and warm though the cold winter months is not quite as appealing when the home you are tucked up in is not always actually that cosy.

One of the (many) lessons we took from the Big Lunch Extras event was that you need to take time out to nurture yourself too before you can do good for others. I already knew this - happy mother equals happy baby was a very early life lesson in my parenting career and back in the early days of motherhood I spent a lot of time drinking tea and comparing nappy contents, spoonfuls of food eaten, hours of unbroken sleep totted up and ml of milk drunk with other new mothers. Infact it was part of the advice I gave to my sister in law about retaining sanity in the face of parenting a toddler.

So regardless of anything else I achieve I will be taking at least two mornings or afternoons out every single week to sit and drink tea and chat with fellow islanders. It is a soul feeding activity... you either play host or get someone to bring you one (usually two) cups of tea. There are often biscuits. Wrongs get righted, the world gets set straight, problems are halved by virtue of being shared, laughs are had, confidences shared and regardless of what the weather is doing outside it all ceases to matter for an hour or so.

Emails, texts, tweets and the like are all well and good but what I miss most about my mainland friends and family is the unscheduled, go where the mood takes us with no agenda, freestyling conversations that happen over kitchen tables and a plate of flapjacks. I'm championing the return of the cup of tea and a chat and I'm not afraid to ring a doorbell unannounced and demand one!