Perfect weather for a nice cup of tea!

The weathermen may well have said that October was going to a really good month but they must have been talking about another country, or at any rate another bit of the country, not the place I am living in. Winter seems to be just around the corner here. 

Yesterday I was going out to meet a friend for lunch and had selected a pair of shoes to wear. Then I took another look out of the window and changed my mind. Boots! Definitely boots! And hat and gloves! The autumn colours may be around still but that's just window dressing! 

The same goes for the early morning sunshine. The latter looks very pretty but it's not giving out much heat. 

 It's a good job I had put my boots on yesterday or my poor feet would have frozen. I went out for the bus which is supposed to come at 10.02. I arrived at the stop in plenty of time as our buses are notorious for leaving Delph early and then taking a five minute rest somewhere further along the route. Most annoying! Anyway, 10 o' clock arrived. No bus. 10.05 still no bus! I almost got on a bus going in the opposite direction with the idea that I could get off a few stops along and change to another bus or even the train going into Manchester. Foolishly I opted to wait, thinking that my bus would be along in minutes. At 10.25 an apologetic bus-driver told us he had been stuck behind a traffic accident and had been unable to move. How very annoying! 

I was JUST in time to meet my friend. We set the world to rights, in the way that women do when they get together. 

We didn't manage to solve the problem of getting the perfect coffee in Manchester, apart, of course, from in my kitchen. However, that is a minor problem compared with the difficulty of getting a perfect cup of tea in continental Europe. I came across an article on that very subject the other day. This told me they even investigate the art of tea making at universities. I am assured that this is true even though it seems to me that there must be more serious things to investigate, especially if my money is being used to fund such projects. Anyway, a certain Dr Stapley of Loughborough University has been examining the thorny question of which should go in the cup first: tea or milk? 

Dr Stapley maintains that if you put the milk in after the tea then the milk heats unevenly which causes the proteins in the milk to "denature", whatever that means, and affects the taste of the final beverage. It seems that some people can really taste that difference; they are not just being picky and fussy. It's been proved scientifically true. I would have believed it anyway. I am the person who can sniff a cup of tea or coffee and tell you whether or not it has sugar in, a skill that some people do not possess. 

Personally I avoid the milk in first or second problem by drinking my tea black these days. And I particularly enjoyed this comment from the writer of the article: "As an aside, having been to America and sampling the weak tea made there, it must be stressed that the teabag should either be in a pot or the mug itself; it is not sufficient just for it to be in the same room." 

Some quite illustrious people have had strong opinions about tea making. Here is a link to the writer George Orwell's instructions for making tea.

Moving on, I want to know when tweeting or twittering abuse about people became "trolling". I keep coming across the term in various news articles. When my children were small you could buy "cute" troll toys. Not at all threatening. In stories trolls used to live under bridges and leap out and threaten to eat anyone who trip-trapped over said bridges. Perhaps it's the lying in wait that makes internet stalkers and the like into trolls. Then the mythology kind of evolved into trolls into beings who would turn to stone if exposed to sunlight - thank you Mr Tolkien for making that clear. 

Maybe that's what should happen to the modern "trolls" who apparently make life thoroughly miserable for their victims.