Last Sunday morning I was meandering around the internet and, via a Twitter post linking to someone’s blog post about whether there was any point to Twitter, that had a comment linking somewhere else, discovered that a company in Canada have invented a drink that is the opposite of Red Bull. It’s an anti-energy drink, and they have called it Slow Cow. [Apparently the marketing executives at Red Bull didn't think this was very funny.]

Maybe everyone else knew about this already? I don’t have a television, so I avoid advertising-bombardment to an extent; which has the downside, occasionally, of someone saying ‘You know such-and-such?’ to me and I have no idea the product exists. But I certainly hadn’t heard of this drink anywhere else yet, and it was only launched in December last year, so perhaps it really is still New and Exciting. I haven’t even seen any in Sainsbury’s, although this is not saying much because Sainsbury’s only just started stocking fennel and that has been around for centuries or even millennia.

According to various product descriptions, the Slow Cow drink makes its consumer feel calm, relaxed, free from anxiety, and yet alert and focused. Which sounds like the ideal combination for inducing a mental state appropriate to being incredibly productive and useful. And also somewhat unbelievable.

After a bit more reading, it transpired that the active ingredient in this wonder-concoction is something called L-Theanine. This is an amino acid, and it is found in something I, and millions of other people, drink already, every day: tea.

There was some inconsistency between different websites as to whether it’s found exclusively in green tea, or in black tea as well. For argument’s sake, let’s assume it’s in all tea. Then I can theorise! In ‘Watching the English‘ by Kate Fox, it is explained that making a cup of tea is one of the many ways the English deal with being socially awkward [having 'social dis-ease', it's called in the book'] – it’s a displacement mechanism to occupy people in a nice, familar and non-controversial way, as is talking about the weather. [Well, actually I think the weather can be quite controversial, but when I've disagreed with people's opinions about the weather in the past they seemed rather affronted, so I've stopped doing it]. It’s what English people do immediately and automatically when someone comes to their house. But what if, as well as being a displacement, it’s also because of the L-Theanine? Maybe having a cup of tea gets rid of our inbuilt social anxiety, and makes us able to deal with Someone Else Being In Our House, Needing To Be Entertained. Also could explain the Nice Cup of Tea being the accepted universal and reflexive solution to any kind of emotional trauma.

This may also partially explain why, some mornings after one cup of tea, I feel as though my head is craving another one, but my stomach is saying ‘Noooo, no more caffeine’. Having a second cup of tea at this stage always makes me feel sick, although generally makes my head better. And maybe it induces a slight feeling of serenity too? Except this is overridden by feeling sick. I’m not sure. I will to monitor this, but of course now I’ll be thinking about it and might get placebo-serenity. I suppose this would be no bad thing, albeit thoroughly unscientific.

In the Week Of Which We Do Not Speak, when I tried to give up alcohol and tea at the same time, this could explain why I was in a thoroughly foul mood for the duration. [Well. Maybe that was because of other things as well.] Theanine deprivation. Makes me slightly concerned that my entire personality is influenced by my two cups of tea a day, and without this dosage I would not be able to socialise nicely at all, and would go around tripping people up in the street because I didn’t like the look of them, taunting zoo animals with holiday brochures about Africa, vandalising people’s allotments, and other unpleasant things. This theory falls down immediately, of course, in that there are bound to be people in the world who drink tea and still do unpleasant things such as instigate totalitarian regimes etc.: so it can’t be Just Tea.

Anyway, the amino acid sounds intriguing. Where to get it, though? The Slow Cow drink doesn’t seem to be on any shop shelves that I’ve seen yet [although, to be fair, I haven't looked for it specifically]. I don’t know whether it survives the decaffeination process of de-caf tea [which I don't really like the taste of anyway, personally] but in case it doesn’t, L-Theanine is available as a straight food supplement. Apparently it’s sometimes even used as an alternative to Ritalin, and I’ve seen some which has added Valerian in it as well, as a sleeping aid.

I wonder what it’s like if you take it with coffee? Does it make you calm, relaxed, focused and very fast? Or with whisky? Calm, relaxed, focused and incredibly poetic? [And drunk?]

Anyway, in conclusion, 1. Twitter is useful, in a roundabout sort of way; 2. Without tea, English society would completely break down; either that or evolve into a new culture of non-tea-dependent super-beings.

Part way into our trip we went to Seattle – apparently on one of the few days of brilliant sunshine that it receives per year.

I very clumsily took photos in the car on the way in. Only two worked:

Liked Seattle a lot. I am told that usually the weather is not quite so spectacular though. We had some coffee on a waterfront, looked at various mountains, water and bridges, had some Vietnamese Pho soup [hmm... I also did this in Paris. Have to go abroad to eat Vietnamese food, although never actually to Vietnam] and then went to meet up for a drink with Randal Prater, who we had met previously in pixel-form – he also plays gigs on Second Life – but never before in Meatspace. We tried to go to an Irish pub which advertised “Happy Hour” between 2 and 5pm. Oddly, it was still closed at 2.30pm – I think from walking past later it was just opening at a quarter to five. Maybe the “Happy Hour” was some sort of in-joke/irony. Hmm.

Anyway, we went instead to a place up the road called Hattie’s Hat – and there’s a pic on Randal’s blog here of us all sitting in a vat looking merry. [A vat turned into seating, that is; we didn't drink/sit in entire barrels of the stuff.] Had a great time, and additionally was totally spoilt with delicious beer from nice micro-breweries [have been told that this area of the USA is best for beer] which was really good. Having been weaned on Room Temperature Traditional English Real Ale by morris dancers I am, of course, used to warm beer, and they serve it cold there: but it is good. Really. Trust me. [I've already had several people say 'No! What! Never! and similar when I have informed them of this. But really. It is.]

In time-zone limbo, time-related eating and drinking conventions can be abandoned; so while I was obtaining my gin and tonic, Tom went to get a cup of coffee, and a man at the next table to me ordered a quite delicious-looking Greek salad. I think we were there for three hours, at least. Every half hour, there was a time announcement over the tannoy, which I originally misheard and found somewhat overly amusing: ‘The time is now 7.30. The end.’ This led to me childishly giggling at this assumed absurdity every half hour, before realising it was actually ‘The time is now 7.30 PM’ which makes a lot more sense and is not funny at all.

I decided that in order to combat travel-induced feelings of awfulness, I was going to eat as much as possible, just to be on the safe side. After lying down for a rest on a nice, quiet, deserted upstairs balcony for a while [the sort of place I'd seek out as a teenager during youth orchestra concert trips between rehearsals, in order to a) read a book on my own because I didn't know anyone, b) avoid being seen reading a book on my own and thus advertising my loner-like status and c) inadvertently perpetuate the need to do this by avoiding any social interaction with other orchestra members which might eventually lead to knowing people in the orchestra] we went to a Chinese canteen place. I obtained and consumed a large vat of noodle soup [and Tom got more coffee] while the sun set, very redly, and my body clock screamed at me a little bit.

Flight no. 2 was shorter – Minneapolis to Portland – but had the concentrated annoyance factor of the seat in front of me being occupied by a five-year-old girl whose idea of an amusing game [she wasn't upset or scared, merely excitable] was to scream in that loud, shrill, Hollywood-small-child-being-nearly-eaten-by-dinosaurs kind of way, despite her Responsible Adult repeatedly and emphatically telling her not to do it. Fortunately she did stop after about ten minutes after we’d got on the plane, and while we still on the ground. If she hadn’t, I was considering breaking the Telling Other People’s Children Off taboo, which is quite a terrifying thought [although it does seem to scare children more to be told off by strangers than familiar admonishers, so is usually effective..]. To be honest, I can’t work out which would’ve been worse: putting up with the child screaming all the way, or putting up with the anxious uncomfortableness of having overridden another adult’s authority by telling off their child and then knowing they were seething at me for being an interfering cow for the rest of the journey. So it’s really quite convenient that neither happened.

I think we got orange juice on this one. Did we get Pretzels? I don’t remember. The orange juice on US airlines is really very nice though. My memory of the whole journey, and the journey back, is punctuated by brilliant orange-juice-receiving-moments.

This is just getting silly. Having cut myself on a coffee ground a while ago, yesterday I managed to better this by getting a splinter from a bit of dried up mint plant that was poking out of a peppermint teabag, and managed to lodge itself in my finger. At least coffee is slightly edgy and dangerous. Peppermint tea is, like, totally un-rock’n'roll, and not the sort of thing that people would imagine it was possible to be damaged by. Hmph.