Tea, art & other things

[narcasse]

Since Tea Palace have a free shipping deal this week in celebration of the opening of a store in Covent Garden I decided to take advantage of it and order some samples of Eve’s Blend, Forever Eden and Cassis.

Eve’s Blend is something I’ve wanted to try since it was introduced since it seemed like it might be a lovely blend of rose and jasmine without one overpowering the other. And it’s turned out to be lovely, though I’m not entirely sure that I can detect much jasmine under the sweetness of the rose.

Forever Eden on the other hand was a little weak for my taste which seems to be the general theme with Tea Palace’s blends. It smelt wonderfully pungent in the jar but came out rather thinner than I would have preferred. It’s fruity enough if you like a fairly weak tea though.

Cassis on the other hand I took an instinctive dislike too the minute I opened the tin. There’s just something about the undertone of it that seems a little off to me both in its scent and once brewed. I suspect that this might be due to the ‘wild strawberry leaves’ in the mix but I still don’t particularly like it. If you say ‘cassis’ to me I expect blackcurrent possibly alcohol with nothing else to dilute that so I can’t say that I’ll be ordering this one again, or necessarily finishing the entire sample.

In fact if anybody wants the Forever Eden and Cassis sample tins I’ll be happy to send them off. There’s only one tea scoop’s worth used so there’s still plenty left.


In other news, levyrasputin asked for music a little while ago prompting a very daft comment on my part which led to the production of this piece of Triniy Blood art. And of course there’s much more where that came from.

Also: wiki’s list of Romanian adjectives because while I can’t even order two beers in the language (something that is essential to know in any language) I’m rather interested in figuring out a little of how Romanian word construction works.

And while I remember, alarming event of the day: watching the quick-light coal reignite after I’d put it on the bowl. That’s never happened to me before but it’s probably my own fault for not watching to make sure the coal lit the entire way across.


Sunlight (PG. 2067 words.)
Forsaken by the light Ion watches Radu in the sun.
(Every time I write a younger Radu getting involved with Süleyman he seems to get younger and younger. He's fifteen this time round which is almost Knightly/Emma territory.)

Comments

[blasphemiliar.livejournal.com]

Tea. On that, I tried a blend I found in my tea collection, long forgotten about. Turns out it was mostly cloves and cinnamon, which was probably why I hadn't touched it in a long time. What is in the Forever Eden tea?

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

Forever Eden contains fruit, berries and flowers (http://www.teapalace.co.uk/Forever-Eden-P606/) though more specifically apple, kiwi, strawberry, rose petal and sunflower blossom. You’re welcome to it if that combination sounds appealing; I occasionally like to ship things out of the country to get them away from me: the last time I did it it involved a Trinity Blood DVD.

Cloves and cinnamon tend to work with orange I find or at least they always seem to be thrown in with it in various combinations of ‘festive’ tea. That said they don’t do too badly in Whittard’s Spice Imperial (http://www.whittard.co.uk/store/catalogue/Tea-P2000/Black-Tea-SC2002/Flavoured-Black-Tea-SC20029/Loose-Spice-Imperial-125g-Tin-101360.raa) really, though cinnamon alone is rather more the sort of thing added as flavour to hot water with lots of sugar because of a blood sugar drop in my case.

[blasphemiliar.livejournal.com]

I'm usually wary of anything that contains berries, but that doesn't sound too bad. I'd be happy to take it off your hands, though Customs may have an issue with that. Not to mention parental units, though I do have a long-forgotten British acquaintance who will come in handy with dispelling any questions.

I'll try orange with the clove and cinnamon tea then. It would be a shame to waste it.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

Do you want the Cassis as well? I likely won’t be sending anything off till around the end of next week at the earliest but PM me your address and I’ll try to make it Friday at the latest. As for your parents, you could always tell them that you ordered some very exclusive tea from a private British tea merchant, then imply that you can’t name names because said tea merchant actually works for Fortnum’s a very prestigious company who wouldn’t be terribly happy about his backdoor dealings if they were to find out.

If you have any Russian instant orange tea to hand I hear that works wonders as a combination. Alas, I only have Turkish instant orange myself but at least it did actually come from Turkey rather than simply being labelled as Turkish.

[levy.livejournal.com]

thanks for the pimping, it was so utterly silly and funny at the same time..! XD

..uhm, my two cents about Radu getting younger and younger:
could it be that is just your Suleyman getting striked back with nostalgia?
I mean, the age gap between them when you first see them in the series seems small, but we know it's very huge, a couple of centuries at least.
I think that Suleyman - nauseated by the immobility of everything that surrounded him and of he himself - fell for that something inside of Radu that was still moving, that was still able to burn, destroy and change. That something inside of Radu that was still growing. It makes sense, in this reading that he first was attracted to him when Radu was still very very young, and maybe, as the helpless romantic Suleyman was, had always nurtured that image of the boy inside of him, even when the adult Radu was growing more twisted, malicious and ready to stab him if required.

[reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com]

I’m definitely interested in how they first became involved with each other, especially since Süleyman seemed to trust Radu enough by the end to have him taking on such important duties in respect to the rebellion. In fact I suspect that I’m working my way down to finally writing Süleyman first sensing his own attraction to Radu when Radu is as young as thirteen because from the background given by the manga at least Radu at that age is quite a sweet, bookish little boy with none of the malignancy of later years. I suppose I’d like to think that Süleyman fell for Radu for the same reason he fell out of love, somewhat, with Seth: both have such potential and though neither of them really seems to be able to achieve their dreams at least, in Süleyman’s eyes, Radu does give it a good shot. Radu has youth and with it that desire to risk all to achieve his aims, where as Süleyman has for far too long allowed himself to be comfortable with the way things are simply because he’s had time to get used to it. Süleyman needs Radu to fuel his desire for change: Radu needs Süleyman to orchestrate the change he craves. In that way they’re something of a distorted mirror of Isaak and Dietrich because while Dietrich is otherwise arbitrary evil which Isaak gives direction, Isaak’s direction isn’t nurturing or particularly bothered about Dietrich’s wellbeing: Dietrich is a tool for the Orden and Isaak certainly doesn’t care if said tool breaks after he’s done with it.

I also like to think that no matter how twisted he became Radu still kept that regard for Süleyman that to an adolescent might easily be taken for love. He certainly manages to come back from the grave to save Ion and even in Carthago already doesn’t at all seem to want to do what he’s being forced to: he says the words expected of him but sounds like he’s weeping and apologises when he knows that Ion will never hear him. I’m very much of the opinion that he’s been misrepresented in fandom as this violent badass who wantonly destroys things because he enjoys it when what he actually seems to be is a fairly sappy teenager who made a mistake, probably based on his romantic notions of revolution, that destroyed his entire life.