The stuff from before on NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown ...

Triumphant Cornish Tea Tour

Well if you wondered why NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown had gone a bit quiet, we've been taking a much earned break down in Cornwall on another of our Celtic tea tours. The Cornish consider themselves to be Celts and have their own Celtic language, Woo. However, to most visitors what is more important is the uses to which they put prodigious amounts of clotted cream produced in the county. Sticking it in a scone with jam works for us, although the younger members of staff were impressed by its addition to strawberry and chocolate ice cream.

We based our stay in the delightful south coast village of Fowey, and not just because its close to the Eden project but because its about the loveliest bit of Cornwall there is. To find out more about our Cornish Tea Tour and which important tea time plants we found at the Eden project see our monthly newsletter.

Vending machine tea

A NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown special report

Have you ever been fortunate to work at a company that is so successful, so huge and all powerful, that it deems that its employees shall not have to make their own tea. No, not for them the drudgery of tea and coffee making, the demeaning scrabble for the kettle, or the productivity sapping wait for it to boil. Oh no only the best for these lucky people. Bestowed upon them the ultimate convenience, their own free vending machine dispensing a variety of hot and cold beverages.

What's going on in there? Fullsize image Illustration by Dave at www.liveinabin.com

Well thats the idea, but of course we all know that vending machines produce some of the most offputting and unpleasant discharges known in any branch of science, engineering, plumbing or industrial waste disposal. Lets face it, anything that produces tea, coffee, vegetable soup and lime squash whilst making a noise like a bin lorry collecting rubbish should be viewed with deep suspicion.

Many have their own idiosyncratic twists. The refusal to dispense drinks into anything but their own flimsy plastic cups is all too common. Once the cup is removed from sanctuary of the machine it quickly looses all structural integrity. This is much like a milk carton whose top has been completely opened and then recklessly filled to brimming with boiling oil. Try sticking your own mug in the dispensing bay one of these guys and it will receive a small squirt of something foul whilst you'll be sprayed with scalding hot water as the whole machine shuts down to await the attentions of its 'local' service engineer. The engineer of course has three other similar incidents at machines to attend to this morning in the same fifty mile wide callout area.

Should you find yourself present when the engineer does turn up, then whatever you don't look inside the machine when it's opened up. To do so is to gaze upon a forbidden nightmare world of pipes and fluid, beyond our everyday comprehension. This is much like being the hapless witness to an alien autopsy. The fact these people usually turn up with a couple of buckets and wearing waterproof footwear puts one more in mind of farmyard animals being assisted in the act of giving birth, rather than a nice cuppa.

Perhaps you've been physically or mentally damaged by the output of one of these deranged metal boxes, or perhaps you actually like them and are constantly charmed by the offerings. Either way we want to hear your stories. Who knows we may even do a little icon to go with them.

Your vending machine feedback

It's Cake Jim, but not as we know it

A NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown special report

Mars is nearer to us at the moment than at any other time in the last 60,000 years, and so we are marking the occasion with this special report into 'Universal Cake Theory'. Is there life on Mars? Well probably not but here at NiceCupOfTeaAnASitDown we are more concerned if there is cake on Mars and somewhere for a nice sit down out of those 200 mile an hour winds that are prone to whip around the red planet.

Two little old space-alien ladies having a nice sit down Fullsize image Illustration by Dave at www.liveinabin.com

So what is 'Universal Cake Theory'? Well its my theory that cakes must be universal. Where there is intelligent life in the universe they probably make and eat some kind of cake. It's obvious really. I like to think that when Carl Sagen was wandering around his dodgy colour separation over layed spaceship in his epic TV series 'Cosmos' pretending to look at nebulas and stuff in awe and listening to Brian Eno, that he was thinking 'the vastness of the cosmos and cakes, there must be a connection'. Well of course if he had of thought that then that would have made two of us.

Now I know what your all going to say, 'What about silicon based life forms Nicey! Or beings composed of pure energy or those who inhabit places where the laws of physics preclude the formation of cake, or even flapjack?'. Well, the silicon based life forms probably would be quite at home with Iced Gems, or maybe an assorted selection of Spanish biscuits, which whilst not cakes are quite similar to rocks. As for those beings composed of pure energy, they probably would have something a bit like a cross between a Swiss roll and Duracell battery. The folks that live where the laws of physics preclude the formation of cake, they want to get with the plot and move house.

We know that man has baked cakes from the earliest times, infact in the 'Epic of Gilgamesh' earliest known written story ever dating back to nearly 5000 years ago, there is a bit about flour or something. Cakes have deep cultural significance, and are baked and shared at important events in our lives and across many different cultures. Now if I was Eric Von Daniken, I would probably attribute this to visiting Space Aliens in our distant pre-historic past who introduced us to baking and probably had some form of advanced technology like a fan oven ideal for getting tricky sponge cakes to rise evenly, and non-stick cake tins. Of course we would have to wait until we sent men to the moon before we discovered how to make non-stick cake tins using space age teflon.