Reblogged from and inspired by Re-Wiring Kummerspeck | rarasaur…also driven by my resolution to aspire to a post a day…

All I know is that I was raised to solve all problems with food.

Socially awkward situation?  Put on some tea.
Did you have a long day? Have a cookie.
Did someone upset you? Go make a loaf of bread.
Are you feeling a little sick? Have some soup.

Is it too hot outside? Too cold? Is it the first day of school? The last? Did you work late? Is it your anniversary of your wedding? Is this the anniversary of your breakup? Did someone pass away? Was someone born? [read more here]

It’s probably a natural human survival impulse reaction with roots that go back to some poor old cave person have a quick and hopefully last scoff before legging it from that pesky T-Rex (so what if cave-folk and T-Rex were never co-located temporally? It’s my alternate history…!) to sustain him as the pursuee…and it would be a shame for that food to go to waste anyway…And in all honesty sometimes it’s just not convenient to go for a run when you’re stressed – unless T-Rex really is on your case, in which case, running (very fast) becomes highly recommended…

Many moons ago, when I used to work in a big concrete building with no windows – no quite true: there were two and in fours years I only managed to move from the left of the window to the right of the window although there were some that would have preferred to see me move the same difference but from the inside to the outside…

Anyway, for a time, part of the my role was to oversee the generation of any response to ‘something happening’ – due to that bugger, Murphy, normally something not good and normally around 4-30 on a Friday afternoon, or just before that grand old tradition of Wednesday afternoon sport…after the first couple of times of finding that getting excited didn’t achieve very much except getting excited, my first act after putting down the phone – hurling it across the room never really achieved much either, especially when it was on one of the twirly cords and would come right straight back at you as soon as the cord reached its full extension – was to put on the jug and “…make a nice cuppa tea…” (who used to use that line in a  radio show about the same time? What ever happens, just “…make a nice cuppa tea…”)

While the jug boiled (yes, there was a Zip but it always tasted bit funny), and then the tea steeped, I was able to get my thoughts together, piece together a rough course of action and decide whether I needed to write Friday night in town off entirely or just plan on a later start…since that time, I’ve always tried to use the tea making activity as a tool to engineer that five minutes of breathing to get my thoughts together…

When I’m busy writing, I often have a drink when I run into a bit of a block…I’m not sure if it’s the drink that does it or just passaging down the spiral stairs, into the kitchen and back up to the study, that gets the grey matter firing again. I don’t so much eat when this happens and in fact when I am on a real writing binge, I will often look out the study window and find that somehow it has gotten dark outside; or that Kirk starts to cry (a grown dog crying – who would think it?); or Lulu very pointedly dumps her head in my lap – her way of saying that it’s well past tea time for good dogs. Then, perhaps, I might feel some minor hunger pangs and realise that although breakfast might have been big, it was also twelve hours ago…

Lulu having made her point re a dog’s dinner…

Shy Kirk

…and I don’t know what Kummerspeck is either…