Things I Like ... Yorkshire Tea

I sit here contemplating my Tuesday and you know who I'm sat with. My best friend. My mug of strong Yorkshire Tea. Every day I manage to get through around 5 or 6 cups of the stuff at an absolute minimum. I could bore you with the health benefits of tea drinking, the restorative and recuperative nature of it's leave or the magical sense of ritual when boiling a pot, but I won't. Just 'ave yourself a proper brew and enjoy your day !



In this last week my world online, in cyberspace, social networking and plugging all my digital wares was wholly 100% vindicated and justified when - probably with a solitary click of a mouse by a staff member in an office somewhere - @YorkshireTea followed me on twitter! Made my day / week / year !

Growing up I even preferred supporting Yorkshire CCC, instead of the local options of Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire, perhaps in part due to being a Sheffield Wednesday fan, or small part being a fan of Michael Bevan and Gavin Hamilton, or the young Ryan Sidebottom's fabulous name, equally fabulous hair, but probably in the largest part due to their Yorkshire Tea logo stitched to the shirt sleeves ... I was a happy and contented little boy, playing with LEGO, drawing flags and watching cricket !



More recently people are becoming more and more aware of my pro-Tea stance, there's even a few bars in Leicester I can go to and get free cups on the house, just at first sight of my face and safe in the knowledge that I won't be ordering a Carlsberg or a Jack Daniels' and Coke. Tea drinking has its ups ... and come to think of it, I can't think of any downs. Keep on slurping people !!

At a wild rock'n'roll party in the not so distant past I regaled the gathered troubadours with tales of fruit, vegetables and tea at 3 in the morning ... producing a holy scripture ... my 'Tea Pyramid' ... it was photographed for posterity and handed down between the ranks. I shall share it with you now, I hope you can make sense of it ... and I hope that if you are a drinker or Earl Grey you are not offended (I'm just that bit to northern to enjoy its perfumed taste) ... and I hope that if you are a drinker of Tesco home brand tea you are offended and you buck your ideas up ... it's not big and it's not clever and you buying that stuff is probably destroying the planet in ways you couldn't possibly imagine ... Spread The Love !



Peace, Love & Tea,
Matt Henshaw x

Things I Like ... LEGO

Number 2 on the Things I Like blog is ... LEGO. My lifelong favourite toy, and favourite toy of the 20th Century. Well done world ! There are enough LEGO bricks in the world for us all to have some, if only we could use that kind of efficiency and production rate with food, maybe there's something to learn from the LEGO Company to solve distribution of provisions and world hunger. One can only dream, eh?

Anyway, I have a lot of trouble with spreading so much Love for LEGO. There are a few things, yeah, the production rate is one, and it's plastic. We don't need so much plastic in the world, even though there's a girl in Turkey who has figured out how to make plastic from banana peel, maybe we can use that to stop the world's reliance on oil, and, also, you can use banana peel to naturally whiten your teeth. How can I be an advocate for such a big plastic shifting company ?!?

OK, LEGO is educational, fun and has helped fuel creativity for over half a decade ! Being that it's plastic and with its patented interlocking brick system it means that LEGO bricks made 50 years ago are still perfectly functional. We can learn so much from the little nodule bricks; numbers, colours, shapes, sizes, it's all in there. I used to spend a lot of my time making LEGO flags of the world ... if you remember from my last blog, one of my first books was an atlas !



Another thing, LEGO Games, games are great, games bring people together, you can learn about each other, talk and share ideas when playing games. With LEGO games you get to build, play and learn. And you can make up your own rules, and sometimes, even, build your own board ! Get yourself involved in some LEGO games ...



But, I gotta say, another thing that bothers me slightly about the LEGO company is there recent trend of franchising movies and tv shows of late, although it might be down to my distaste for so much of popular culture, as when I see LEGO Batman, or the recent LEGO Simpsons set, I do get pangs of excitement ! And I did spend a whole summer playing LEGO Batman on the PS2, the only time I've played a computer game and completed it 100%, finding all the secret red bricks and unlocking all the characters, even Ra's Al Ghul, I don't know how I did it, but I did it, and there's a memory card somewhere to prove it !



Finally, I had a reminder recently that I do truly and deeply love these little plastic gizmos ! The LEGO Movie came out just this last week. I was underwhelmed by the build up to the movie and I was almost entirely put off by the trailers for the film, however, I watched it. And I'm so glad I did, I watched it, and then gave up another couple of hours and watched it again ! I was completely taken aback by the animation, the humour, the postmodernism, everything. The cast is fantastic, and it doesn't overwhelm the plot or the film, like a good Pixar movie doesn't. I could probably write you a few thousand words on how great the film is, and its goings on, but I don't want to waste anymore of your time or giveaway too much of the plot. Just go see it !!