I’ve had a surge of excitement over the past few weeks despite February being my worst month in the year - I think it’s down to the weather.
But good things happened including a chance to meet up with one of the regular readers of this newsletter (hello Sian!). We stumbled across each other in real life by accident at the Courageous Leadership event. I’ll admit it was a bit of a shocker to have somebody tell me that a Have You Thought About newsletter subscriber that I’d not met before was there. So Sian - who is pretty amazing - and I decided why not actually meet in real life. And we did - at the pretty cool London Transport Museum cafe in Covent Garden.
It’s decked out with Tube seats! And is a lot of fun - so first off, when meeting to make new friends, why not find a fun place to meet.
And then regular readers know I love post. It makes my heart sing. Getting postcards and a personal letter is certainly a way to make me think fondly of you.
There was a period in my life when I had strangers writing letters to me from all over because I was investigating the lost art of letter writing. Anyway, I digress.
I was excited because apart from my regular copy of the National Union of Journalists magazine, a copy of the New Humanist was in the door. And the focus for this edition was science and thinking science.
The New Humanist is the magazine for the Rationalist Association and its focus is science, culture and ideas. Since these are all things I love, when I saw them call out for more culture ideas on X, I saw an opportunity to write a review about an exhibition that I’d spotted on the other side of London and I’d been in two minds about visiting. Two minds because it would take me two hours at least on public transport to get to the Horniman Museum and Gardens, so it really had to be an investment and commitment to go.
It was called 茶, चाय, Tea and focused on tea. I love tea. I really have a slightly obsessive relationship with tea - I’ve lived and worked overseas and there are two staples that come with me whenever I travel. One is my mum’s thepla (Gujis would understand this and if you don’t, well read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianFood/comments/15bujjq/what_are_the_reasons_people_prefer_theplas_for/), and secondly is tea. I take teabags with me because you can’t always find a good cup of tea abroad. Tea in the US is not like what we have here.
I like tea so much that I actually…