Rituals

One of the things I miss about wine is all the rituals that go with it.

The wine lists, the wine chat, the waiter showing you the label, the sound of the cork popping out of the bottle, the swirling, the sniffing, the sipping. The glasses, the corkscrews, the bottle stoppers, the decanters.

You just can't do all that stuff with Diet Coke, can you?

After many months, I manage perfectly happily without the wine rituals at home, but whenever I go out to a restaurant, I feel like there's something missing. 

I get a bit edgy - scratchy. I don't know what to do with my hands. So I end up eating really quickly, then I sit there thinking now what?

Well, I have now found a solution to this problem of the missing ritual and the jobless hands:

Tea.

I'm afraid it only works in some restaurants, specifically Chinese, Thai or Japanese, but since everything in London is going 'Asian Fusion', that's not too much of a problem.

I've read up a bit on tea rituals. Look at this, from Yauatcha.com:

 

In the East – China, India and Japan specifically – the variety of teas have evolved naturally over the years, much like wines have evolved in the West. There are many similarities between tea and wine: each has its own unique aroma, texture and taste.

When pairing wine and food, you must consider carefully the wine’s characteristics in order to correctly match with the smells, flavours and textures of the food. This same process can be applied to tea and food pairing.

The Chinese have been drinking tea with food for thousands of years, and a good Chinese restaurant will have up to around forty different teas to chose from.

And the great thing about drinking tea with your food is it involves just as much ritual as drinking wine.

They bring your tea in a diddy little tea pot on a tray, with a doll's house size tea cup. This means that you have to keep pouring your tea from your little pot into your teeny cup, which you sip from slowly. Happy hands!

I was reading a post on Soberistas from a poor lady who'd been out to a fancy restaurant with her husband. She ordered an alcohol free beer. The snooty waiter asked her to repeat the order three times, then - after pouring the beer - walked off muttering 'classy' under his breath.

What a tosser!

But you know what? If you order green tea, jasmine tea, white tea - whatever - in a Chinese restaurant, the waiter (presuming they're Chinese) looks at you with respect. You can see them thinking Finally! A westerner who knows what you should be drinking with this food!

Try it - it's awesome.

So, I was drinking green tea in a Thai restaurant with Mr SM and another couple (who were all drinking wine, obvs). We hadn't seen them since a party a few weeks back. The other chap confessed that he remembered nothing after the liqueurs came round after dinner.

I told him about the silly dancing. And then about his (very funny) rant to a mutual friend about her choice of schools for her child. (I reassured him that she'll have no memory of the rant either).

His wife told us about pleading with the taxi driver to take them home, promising he wouldn't vomit, then sticking his head out of the window all the way home.

So that's three new things for Chinese New Year:

(1) Tea with food
(2) Being able to remember an entire party
(3) Being 'the sensible one.' Who knew?

Happy Friday!

Love SM x

Look After Yourself

I was reading an article about mental health, when I came across this expression:

You have to look after yourself before you can look after the rest of the world.

It sounds obvious, but - to be honest - it was a bit of a light bulb moment for me.

You see, we all run around madly trying to earn money, bring up our children, look after our parents, the dog, and - somewhere along the line - squeeze in the odd 'date night', and there just isn't enough time to look after ourselves.

I feel guilty if I even sit down, let alone take time out for a massage or a pedicure.

I'm actually rather thrilled that my hair is going grey (fyi, American friends, that's not a typo, it's the correct spelling of grey. See also colour), because I'm forced to go to the hairdresser every six weeks to have it coloured (never say dye), which means that I have to sit still for nearly two hours. Bliss.

Then I saw that line in my magazine and thought, hang on a minute. I've got it all back to front!

You see, I used to run around like a whirling dervish, doing all that stuff. By the end of the day I'd be shattered and stressed, so I would reward myself with...... you guessed it.... a bucket of vino. Which would mean that I'd start the next day already below par and exhuasted. Repeat, ad infinitum.

Actually, what we should be doing is 'rewarding ourselves' in advance. We need to make sure that we are properly healthy, rested and relaxed before we can look after the rest of the world.

It's NOT an indulgence, it's actually just good common sense. It's obligatory. It's part of your job description.

It's a bit like the safety briefing on an airplane when they tell you "In the event of the oxygen levels in the cabin falling, oxygen masks will be provided. Make sure you fit your own mask before helping your child."

They know that your instinct is to help your child first, but you will be entirely useless if you can't breathe.

I know what you're thinking: It's all very well, SM, but I don't have the time or the money to look after myself.

Nonsense. How much time did you spend drinking or hungover? How much money did you spend on booze? Just take a proportion of that time and that cash, and make sure you do something good for yourself.

(See my post: The Concept of Self Care written when I was on Day 52, and badly in need of a pick me up)

On that note, I went to the gym yesterday, for the first time since the cancer thing. I spent an hour doing a full on aerobics session with ladies half my age, then came home and had a good long soak in the bath (because my muscles had seized up and I could barely walk).

There are recent studies that show that aerobic exercise is one of the most effective ways of reducing cancer recurrence rates (or avoiding cancer in the first place). So, it wasn't an indulgence - it was a way of ensuring my children have me around to help look after their children. Medicinal.

So, don't leave 'self care' to the bottom of the list, when you might be able to squeeze a bit in after doing all the other 'more important' things. Schedule it. Make it a priority. Not for you, but for everyone else in your life.

Love SM x

Life Binges

I've been reading a review of a book entitled 'Binge'.

I can't bring myself to buy the actual book, because it's written by a YouTuber called Tyler Oakley and I am, quite simply, too old to buy books penned by YouTubers.

However, I am really intrigued by Oakley's philosophy.

Oakley's book, apparently, chronicles the series of binges in his life to date, not in a 'woe is me' fashion, but in a celebratory way. He encourages his followers to embrace excess, own desires and indulge them.

The intro reads Go ahead, binge....Even if I spend every waking moment attempting to keep my life in balance I'm going to f*** up. Having already f***** up quite a few times in my life, and having lived to tell the tale, I don't regret any of it. I've binged plenty of times in my life, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Regardless, I indulged.

Oakley implores us to cling onto those things that make us feel alive.

Now, DO NOT take this as an instruction to crack open the vino. We've been through this already, haven't we? That time is gone.

However, I find Oakley's thinking really interesting in terms of not regretting past binges, or pining over what might have been.

One of the things that made me sad when I quit drinking is the idea that I messed it all up. And the thought that maybe, if I'd only been able to be a bit more sensible, more moderate, I'd have been able to carry on drinking happily into my twilight years.

Oakley reminds me that that just isn't me! I would never have been happy having one cigarette a day, and one glass of wine. What would have been the point?

Because I am a life binger.

When I smoked, I smoked like a chimney. When I drank, I drank like a fish. When I started working in advertising, I lived and breathed that crazy world.

When I tried to combine work and motherhood, and ended up feeling like I couldn't do either whole heartedly, or properly, I quit work in order to totally binge on motherhood.

I, like Oakley, just cannot do moderation. And that's OKAY. It just means that instead of spreading everything out evenly through life, you do it all in a series of binges.

So, the big question is: what next?

I've done the nicotine binge. The alcohol binge. The motherhood binge.

How about inappropriate relationships with younger men? Online Bingo? Cage fighting?

Mmmm. Maybe my next life binge should be writing. Creating. Or exercise. Less dangerous.

So, don't feel bad about where you are, what got you here, or where you're going. Just think been there, done that. What next?

Love SM x