I am nothing if not a creature of habit.  In just about every area of life, I find a routine quickly and I stick to it.  Take the way I make a cup of tea: firstly I need the right teabags (Yorkshire Tea is my longtime favourite, although anything strong and flavourful will do), as well as semi-skimmed milk and white granulated sugar.  Secondly I need a good mug: it has to be a decent size, sufficient both to brew the tea (too small and it’s too strong; too large, too weak) and make the drink last a good thirty to forty minutes; it should be unfussily decorated, either with one or two strong colours or a simple pattern; and it needs to have a rim that feels comfortable on my lips, neither too thick nor too thin, and definitely not chipped, encrusted or cracked.  Thirdly, the water needs to be just boiled, the electric kettle clicking off exactly as I pour the water into the mug and onto the bag.  Finally, the spoon needs to be right. 

At the risk of ending up in Private Eye’s ‘Me and my Spoon’ feature, I’ve always had a thing about A Good Teaspoon.  Obviously it has to be metal: I can’t stand those plastic spoons you find in budget cafés, and especially not those ridiculous ‘stirrers’ that don’t even look like spoons as favoured by McDonalds.  I’m not hot on metal spoons with plastic handles, either: I need to feel that steel.  The spoon also has to have a large bowl – not so big that it becomes a tablespoon exactly, but, after years of using reasonably-bowled spoons, small spoons confuse my sugar measurements, and worst of all used teabags have a tendency to fall off small spoons in the process of being transferred from the mug to the bin, the bag either ending up on the floor or, worse, dropping back into the mug from a height of several inches, causing the tea to slop out over the sides of the mug and, by adding more tea to the water, altering the strength of the brew I’d just a few seconds before judged to be precisely right. 

My only other teaspoon requirement is that the older it is, the better.  Using a brand new teaspoon, even a gleaming silver one, does nothing for me: I need a stainless steel spoon that is actually stained.  I should emphasise the difference between ‘stained’ and ‘dirty’ – I always rinse a spoon before using it, but I like a teaspoon stained golden-brown from years of stirring, tattooed by decades of tannin.  I’m not sure why this is: perhaps it makes me think of past generations using the same spoon in old kitchens to make tea thirty, fifty, eighty years ago perhaps, when all the teaspoons of my imagination were made of stained stainless steel, when things were authentic and had a bit of style, before everything was cheapened by plastic and denim, when men wore hats and suits and ties no matter what job they did (or even if was their day off, come to that), when there were Lyons’ Corner Houses instead of McDonalds, when tea really was tea... I mean, I could get carried away.  But this is beside the point. 

The point is that there is a particular spoon I always use for making tea which matches exactly the above criteria.  In fairness to myself, I’m not really a spoon-nerd; it’s the comfortableness of the spoon I’ve ended up using that has set the standard, not the other way round.  I always use the same one despite having a selection in my kitchen of at least a dozen.  Mum and Dad gave them all to me, together with a bunch of other kitchen utensils, in a job lot when I left home some ten years ago now.  They didn’t need to give me so many teaspoons, but being the way they are, it wouldn’t have happened any other way: they’re the sort of people who have at least three of every household object you can imagine, and in most cases about three hundred – pillows, blankets, towels or teaspoons, you name it, they’ve got half a drawerful going spare. 

The spoon in question is just over five inches in length.  The bowl is one and three-quarter inches long, exactly an inch at its widest point and just over a quarter of an inch deep; heaped with sugar it makes for one sweet drink, even in a big mug.  With the exception of a sliver of shine across the bottom of the bowl where the spoon sits on its base, the metal is worn and scuffed as well as stained, such that hardly anything is reflected in it beyond a blur.  My face appears in that fragment of shine, my nose even longer than it already is, my lips protruding, my head curved and exaggerated fisheye-style.  There are no patterns on the spoon except a simple design of two adjacent semi-circles at the tip of the handle’s underside.  One way up it looks like a wide, curvy W; turned upside-down it becomes the top of an owl’s face; on its side it’s a crescent moon with a pointed nose in the middle, like an illustration you might find in a children’s storybook.  A little way in from the pattern are five tiny stamps in the metal: the first four read, respectively, E, P, N, S, the last A1, as if denoting excellence, perfection; research reveals the spoon is actually not stainless steel but silver-plated.  It’s a good spoon, and I love using it, to the point where if I lose it I get depressed, and a cup of tea or coffee made with another spoon just doesn’t taste the same. 

True, it’s very rare for me not to be able to find my spoon, as I’m very protective of it.  But sometimes my wife hides it.

Okay, in honesty I don’t think she deliberately hides the spoon; its disappearance generally coincides with her doing the washing-up, and where I dry the spoon and return it immediately to its home (a cup on the worksurface) after washing it, she just buries it in the cutlery drainer with all the other utensils.  I get it back in the end but only after a prolonged and precarious game of Kitchen Utensil Ker-Plunk, where if I’m not careful the removal of the wrong fork at the wrong moment can bring a large Sabatier down on my foot.  No, there’s no malicious intent on behalf of my wife’s kitchen behaviour: I think she simply doesn’t relate to my position on this whole teaspoon issue.  And rightly so; I think it would be a bad day for our relationship if I were to ever say to her, “Look, please don’t hide this teaspoon.  I need to know where it is at all times.  I can’t make a cup of tea with any other spoon.  If you use it, please put it back here where I can find it.”  I mean, shades of Sleeping With the Enemy or what?

Sometimes I’ll go into the kitchen after my wife has made a cup of tea, and see the spoon she used lying rinsed on the draining board: it might be a gimmicky cartoon one that came as a free gift with a box of Tetley about 20 years ago, or one with a blue plastic handle that came in a cutlery set (a Christmas present from my Nan), or even a plain, ordinary, unpatterned, tinny, almost flat one which I don’t know the origin of at all but never use if I can help it.  Try as I might, I can find neither rhyme nor reason to my wife’s teaspoon choice; she just seems to take one at random from Mum and Dad's original selection.  This is possibly the main difference between us: I’m a creature of habit; she’s flexible.  I tend to want to keep things the way they are; she likes to change them periodically.  But I can live with all this.  This sort of thing is what marriage is all about.

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Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the Sindy's Talk of the Town magazine runs a lovely piece by a blogger called qB, about how discovering the Samuel Pepys Diaries online and consequently starting up her own blog earlier this year helped her recover from a nervous breakdown. Very inspirational, interesting and gentle writing. I went straight online after reading it and discovered an excellent blog too (www.frizzylogic.org). The internet often gets a negative press but this was an uplifting story about how the web can help people reach out and connect.

Following frizzylogic's links took me to another very well-written blog called londonmark, the latest post for which features a superb piece called Y is for You.

Talk of the Town meanwhile also carries an article by Tania Glyde headlined "Why do so many people have children when they are unable to bring them up?" While she does have a good point about the rudeness of some kids and the apparent impossibility of doing anything about it, even when they put their hand up your skirt as one 8-year-old did to her in Ladbroke Grove recently, the headlinular question is a bit naieve. "Why does society smile with such faceless, sentimental blandness when anyone announces that they are pregnant, as if that were a sacred state beyond question?" she asks. Er, what are you supposed to say, exactly? "Get rid of it immediately, it'll only grow up to be a nasty little devil"?

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Went to bed very late last night after watching Channel 4's Sexiest 100 Moments, or Top 100 Sexy Moments or whatever it was called, in its entirety. Whilst generally disapproving of this cheap and unimaginative TV "list" format (100 Scariest Moments, 100 Funniest Moments, The Big Read etc), this compilation was annoyingly compelling and enjoyable. I'd completely forgotten about the hilarious Jeff Goldblum/Emma Thompson scene in The Tall Guy, and the dodgy bit between Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve in the even dodgier The Hunger, so it was good to be reminded of those and others from a hazy past. Personally I think the omission of a favourite scene from Desert Hearts was an oversight but my second favourite, Betty Blue, was represented with no less than two excellent clips. Tragically though the four hours of sexy excerpts left me more exhausted than stimulated...

The Independent reports that left-wing US billionaire (and let's face it, you don't see those words together very often) George Soros has donated a large chunk of his fortune to various anti-Dubya causes, in the belief that the defeat of George W. Bush in next year's presidential election is "a matter of life and death". "So far, he has spent more than $15m," reports the paper, "two-thirds of it going to a liberal-leaning group called America Coming Together, which intends to mobilise voters in battleground states next November; $3m of it going to a new Washington think-tank run by Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, John Podesta; and $2.5m to the passionately anti-Bush internet lobbying group MoveOn.org, to help pay for television advertisements attacking the President." Soros writes: "The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognise that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth... When President Bush says, as he does frequently, that freedom will prevail, he means that America will prevail. In a free and open society, people are supposed to decide for themselves what they mean by freedom and democracy, and not simply follow America's lead ... A chasm has opened between America and the rest of the world." I think he means "a political chasm", since America and the rest of the world is bridged quite comprehensively by Gap, Starbucks, Levis and one or two other US brands.

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The Independent also has a profile of Benjamin Zephaniah, further to his rejection of an OBE earlier this week, while the Guardian prints several letters on the topic, from readers mostly in support of his decision. One reader writes, "Why don't we just rename it the Order of British Excellence so we can all go home?" I think toning down the "empire" bit is a very worthy point, but even if this were to happen, the gongs would still be presented by the Queen, so it wouldn't make much difference to anti-establishment Brits like Zephaniah.

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Elsewhere in the Independent today Liverpool poet Roger McGough is interviewed, while the Guardian carries a piece by ace US novelist Don DeLillo on "cinema and memory".

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I'm not really a rugby sort of cat - I've never been into any sports, in all honesty - but it would be churlish not to register my concatulations to England for their weekend victory over, er, the other team in the World Cup. The Independent reports today on the national feelgood effects of the win, which are sure to be substantial, although I have to admit I'm with poet Michael Rosen when he says, "When kids want to play football all they need is a couple of jumpers for goalposts. It [rugby] will never break out of its middle-class ghetto. Where in the inner cities do they get the H-posts for rugby or the space to play it? And you can't explain the rules to anyone under 10." Or over 10 in Thoughtcat's case. The Times meanwhile reports that poet laureate Andrew Motion is having problems composing an ode to the victory because he can't find a rhyme for Wilkinson, and requests suggestions by email. Although I think British poetry must be in a pretty dire state if the poet laureate can't find a rhyme, I couldn't resist the challenge. How about:

I belatedly came across this excellent piece by Alan Warner in Saturday's Guardian Weekend about his most embarrassing moment (part of the magazine's series and book called "Mortification: Writers' Stories Of Their Public Shame"). About half way through this account of how his elderly neighbours mistook him for another Alan Warner, asking him to sign the other writer's books, I did start to wonder whether the whole thing was actually true, but it doesn't matter - it's hilarious.

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21st November

19th November

18th November

The Guardian has devoted the whole of its G2 supplement today to celebrity letters to George W. Bush. There are a couple of quite insane ones (it's just as well Julie Burchill's leaving the paper at long last, and God knows what planet - or side - Bel Littlejohn is on) but there are several extremely eloquent messages too, including Sebastian Faulks, Clare Short and Hari Kunzru. My personal favourite though is this one, from Irish writer Ronan Bennett:

There is no way to write this but in anger. For the dead and mutilated you have left in the wake of your shocking tread, from Afghanistan to Iraq. For the prisoners you have caged, manacled and tortured, from Bagram to Guantanamo. For your worship of the warrior. For the smart bombs you dropped from 30,000ft and the missiles you fired from 1,000 miles. For the flesh this hateful technology has charred and for the limbs it has severed. For your threats to the sovereign nations and international bodies who oppose your ambitions. For the crass lies you told the world. For your cynical corruption of law. For your naked plundering of a conquered people's wealth. For your blank cheque to Ariel Sharon. For every signature with which you consigned a human being to the death chamber in Texas. For the super-rich friends you have so handsomely rewarded and for the poor, unemployed and marginal in your own country whose lives you continue to blight. For making the world an infinitely more dangerous place.

For all these reasons, do not be fooled by the flags you will see fluttering on the Mall. Do not be fooled by the red carpets the toadies will guide you to step upon.

Look about you, if your hosts will let you look, if your flunkeys dare let you peek from beneath the official shield. Look about you when you land. You will see people in their tens of thousands protesting against your visit. Do not say we are "lucky" to live in a country that permits free speech and free assembly. Do not insult us like that. Those rights were hard won.

I doubt that what you see will chasten you, still less change your mind - you are a man of conviction, of ideological certainty, you have truly global ambitions and power to match - but at least it should be clear to you, Mr Bush, that you are not welcome here.

17th November

Hanif Kureishi meanwhile is interviewed in today's Guardian. "I think when you're writing, you look for the bits that are difficult," he says. "They're the exciting bits. You look for conflict. When you're writing you're aware that when you stop, at that moment it's an act of censorship. If you think, 'I shouldn't say that,' it's always the things you should say." It's interesting (and reassuring) to hear that even someone like Kureishi, who has never flinched from exploring and depicting the most controversial and painful aspects of human relationships, still gets to points in his own work where he stops and thinks "I shouldn't say that." Also revealing is his response to the journalist's question of whether he worries about the ideas drying up. "No," he says, "I don't see why they should." Because, suggests the journalist, the more time you spend at your desk, the less of life you see to write about. "Fucking hell," Kureishi fires back, "what do you think it's like in my kitchen? It's a crucible in there, it's an emotional crucible... People think, this guy hasn't left the house for five years, but in the house it's hot. That's what you look for."

This week's 'menu thought' has been rattling around in my head for some time. Frustratingly though I can't find out who wrote it. Was it Brian Patten, bard of Liverpudlia? Was it Pablo Neruda, poet of onions? Was it Fleur Adcock, Wendy Cope, e.e. cummings? I spent an enjoyable hour leafing with increasing panic through all my volumes of poetry but didn't find it anywhere. I'm sure it is a poem, or a line from a poem, although it could be from a novel. I entered it into Google but that turned up nothing either. I even began to wonder if I wrote it, but I think I'd remember if I had. If anyone knows who did write it, please contact me on info@thoughtcat.com and put me out of my misery...

Helen Fielding is interviewed in the Guardian today about her move from Bridget Jones to her new novel, a spy pastiche called Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination. It turns out she was writing something else to begin with, but shelved it, for reasons which made me feel decidedly uncomfortable: 'I was looking back through [the manuscript] and there were all these notes. First of all there were these notes saying, "Oh my God, this is so boring, I'm so fed up with this," and then there were things like, "He was a tall, lugubrious man" crossed out, and then "He was a short, ginger-haired, stocky man" crossed out, and then "He was a... oh, who gives a fuck what sort of man he was?" And I realised that if I couldn't even read it back, then I couldn't really expect anyone else to read it...'

Philip Pullman is bombarded in an Independent "You ask the questions" feature today, in which the bestselling author of The Amber Spyglass adventures emerges as, well, pretty unadventurous, actually. "I'm not a splashing-out kind of person," says the millionaire, "I'm cautious. It could all end tomorrow, you see, so I've mainly splashed out on my pension. But I suppose I do buy more power tools than I used to."

A novelist called Henry Sutton, writing in the Independent on Sunday, has lamented the decline of "gritty" social realist novels. "At a reading I gave in Durham recently," he wrote, "a woman in the audience said she didn't think she'd be able to recommend my new novel to her book group because the characters were so unpleasant, and the ending too bleak. She said she didn't sympathise with them, and that what she wanted from a novel was to fall in love with the characters." Providing an eclectic (or maybe eccentric) overview of such books, from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to Money, I feel he omitted to mention The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend. Although ostensibly a children's book (or at least an adolescent's), I remember it appealing hugely to readers of all ages when it was published in the early 1980s (I was a bit younger than Adrian when it came out, and I count it as the first "proper" book I read), and it surely deserves credit for highlighting - especially to young people - the bleak effects of unemployment and single parenthood on a family disenfranchised by the values of the Thatcher era. Coming from a Tory background as I did, Townsend's book did much to change the way I looked at politics and society, and best of all perhaps it showed that addressing such issues could be done effectively with tenderness and humour, and indeed through characters that it was possible to fall in love with. Meanwhile, Kid's Stuff, Sutton's own "gritty" novel (so much so it comes with a free bag of sand), is available at Amazon.