I think I’ll procrastinate a while longer.

Funny how I manage to work myself up into excitement over writing when I’m doing something else; I use it as a carrot. “Just think – when you’re done this, you can go write!” I can fool myself pretty well, right up until the point where I finish whatever work I’m doing, stand up to go to the laptop, and… well, maybe I’ll get another cup of tea. Hmm, I’ll check my e-mail. You know, I’ve been typing for three hours; I should reward myself by sitting down with a book.

Ceri and I met yesterday for our weekly check-up-on-each-other’s-creativity luncheon, and we commiserated over the tactics our minds create to escape actually committing anything to paper. During university, my favourite way to avoid working on a paper was to wash my hair. Now, it’s blogging. So I understood completely when Ceri looked at me and said, “I have no pages for you today. But I wrote that post on democracy.”

So she did. It’s a terrific post, too. I felt a bit embarrassed when I handed her my thirteen pages, though; guilty, almost. I buried myself in a magazine while she read them, half reading it, half dreading her reaction. I was pleased and (again) slightly embarrassed to note three out-loud laughs and at least one out-loud comment in the middle of it. She squared the pages at the end of it and said, “So, when do I get the next installment? This is terrific!” and away we went, discussing characters, scenes, and so forth. She asked if I knew where it was going; no, of course not, I said. I do have a vague idea; developments occur to me as I write, and I file them away to bring up later when it’s time, but I don’t have a point by point outline of everything that will happen. I know that I’m finding things out as my main character finds them out. Unlike her, however, I know roughly what’s going on in her environment and her society, so I’m one up on her already.

It’s odd. This is the first contemporary work I’ve ever done. I have piles and piles of fantasy tucked away – short stories, a novel, novellas, most set in a world I created which has been developing for about sixteen years now. My only ventures into anything remotely different have been two or three urban fantasies I’ve written, one which I even finished but exists only in longhand. I also never expected to write a comedy, which is what genre this ongoing work most definitely falls into. In all respects, this is a huge departure for me. I’m enjoying it immensely.

Not enough, obviously, to stop blogging and get over to the laptop and pick up where I left off, though.

I will. I will do it.

Although I so desperately want to curl up with Howards End…

I have a confession to make.

I am a tea snob.

I love opening a tin of good, loose tea. I love lifting it up and breathing in the symphony of odours of every ingredient. I love scooping it up in a tea ball, hooking the tea ball onto my teapot, pouring the boiling water into the pot (but not over the ball – mustn’t “scare the tea”). I even love watching the stream of golden brown liquid splash into my cup, steam rising. And then, of course, there’s that first heavenly sip, where those airborne flavours marry on your tongue and produce something hinted at previously and yet oh-so-different.

I am also, alas, lazy.

So, teabags are my friends in the mornings, and usually during the day, too, when I’m working on the computer. I’m a Twinings fan, and Earl Grey used to be my standby until they introduced a new flavour a couple of years ago: Lady Grey, a similar tea but flavoured with orange and lemon as well as bergamot. I was so excited about it I gave it to countless people, who were probably just humouring me. I’ve been using Lady Grey teabags ever since, which I have to pick up downtown since my local grocery emporium doesn’t stock it.

Until last weekend, when my mother and I walked into a specialty grocery store to pick up various dinner items. I saw rows upon rows of Twinings tins – a whole world of loose teas! – and nestled in the midst of them all was a blue one that I had never seen anywhere else.

Twinings makes loose Lady Grey tea.

I picked it up; I cradled it to my chest; I crooned to it. It came back to Montreal with me. This morning, I said to myself that I would make a proper cup of tea for the first time in months, and opened the tin.

The first thing that struck me was the look of it. Tea is, well, brown, little crinkly brown dry things. Lady Grey has blue flowers in it, and whiteish chopped up peel.

It was beautiful. Now, I know I went to bed late last night, and got up too early this morning, but it was, well, pretty. The blue was a nice Wedgewood or Spode-type of blue, and the flowers sort of look like lavender flowers. The tea was a warmer brown than I remember from my tins of Earl Grey, too.

Then the smell reached me.

I never realise how old my tins of tea are until I buy a new one. Old tea has a bit of a musty, flat smell to it when you open the tin, but it still smells like tea. A new tin smells alive.

And the flavour is… complex. A pot of tea made with loose tea is like freshly ground coffee beans to instant coffee. Sure, it’s coffee, but to what degree?

Excellent tea such as this should be enjoyed in the very best cup you have. My mother gave me a single bone china cup and saucer a few years ago with pansies on them which I am petrified of breaking, so as much as I’d like to use it, I usually leave it on the shelf and admire it instead. When I’m finished this mug, though, methinks I shall fetch it down, wash it out, and go sit at my laptop to work on the Great Canadian Novel.