Rain. Birthdays. And caffeine.

Okay! I think we’ve had enough rain for the time being. The dust has been settled on the bridle paths. Indeed, some of the old mud-puddles have re-established themselves. The sun can come back out again now and remind us that it’s still July! It’s not particularly cold … just rather damp again.

Today is my son’s birthday, my oldest granddaughter’s birthday, my Italian friend Guido’s birthday and the birthday of the daughter of one of my daughter’s friends. I have mentioned before that we go in for shared birthdays in our family but today’s rather takes the biscuit!

I am catching a bus over to my granddaughter’s later today. We’ll then catch a bus together with her dog and eventually meet her mother, my daughter, in the park at Uppermill. The original plan was for a longish walk to Uppermill but the rain has rather scuppered that idea. We hope for a dry bit later in the afternoon when we all meet in the park. After that there will be cake and presents at my house.  If we arrange it properly there might be a video call to my son so that we can all sing happy birthday and eat a piece of cake in his honour too. 

I have reading about caffeine addiction. Apparently something like 90% of the world’s population take in caffeine regularly, and not always on coffee. People who blanche at the thought of giving their children coffee will let them have fizzy drinks which contain caffeine, often unaware of or oblivious to the caffeine content. When the kids get hyperactive they blame it on the sugar high from the fizzy drink but it’s also the caffeine. 

Then there’s all that tea we drink. 

It seems we, the British, stole the secrets of tea production from China so that we could have it grown and processed in India, cheaper than buying it from the Chinese. Goodness! I hope we don’t have to start apologising for that long ago action! 

Apparently Buddhists used to use coffee to help them get through long sessions of meditation. Coffee shops were established in England in the 17th century, places where scientific ideas and politics would be discussed by the gentlemen of the time. Charles II, worried that plots were being hatched in coffeehouses, tried to close them down but nobody took any notice of him and the places stayed open. So he quietly rescinded his own law.

Tea used to be more expensive that coffee but eventually it became the drink of factory workers all over the country, sweet tea - with sugar imported from the West Indies - keeping the workers energy levels up even when they didn’t have enough food to eat. 

I know people who have had great difficulty weaning themselves off coffee, having decided they were too dependent on it. Caffeine is a drug but most of us are unaware of it. Would it be banned if it was only just discovered now?

On that note, I’m off to make coffee. We have tea for breakfast but make coffee to accompany the one o’clock news.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!