Girlbooker's Tea and Toast

Ever get a really annoying song stuck in your head? I'm not going to mention any specifics here, or you'd be cursing me all day, but let's just say a happy, bouncy quartet of children's performers in brightly coloured T shirts and black pants have a LOT to answer for where my mental space is concerned. The term "earworm" has got to be fairly new because it shows up with a red squiggle every time I write it. It comes from a German word which means "musical itch" but I personally really like the idea of a little wiggly worm creeping into your ear and burrowing down. They often come about when we are bored, stressed or really tired, which would explain why my husband used to hum that damn WHAM song about twenty times a day in the hazy days of baby-induced sleep deprivation. And because our brains are wired to remember patterns, the structures of a song - melody, rhythm and lyrics, - can easily get stuck in there and set themselves on to endless repeat...

I once read, somewhere or other, that eating an apple will do a better job of waking you up than a cup of coffee. So why don't we have any apple shops, with exposed brick walls, industrial-hipster lighting, and queues of apple-deficient people snaking out the door waiting for their fix each morning? Well, for whatever reason(s), we are stuck with the cafe. But it just so happens that there are plenty of benefits to grabbing a quick coffee in the morning, completely aside from whether or not the beverage in question can make you feel more awake and alert. Here are my top 5: 1. Getting Some Fresh Air Stepping out of the office for a quick coffee run is a very good thing. Being outside and exposed to direct sunlight can help lift your mood. There are proven links between lack of sun exposure and anxiety and depression. The sun will also give you a (probably much needed) dose of vitamin D, which is imperative for bone strength. There are apparently a whole heap of other amazing ...

A pomegranate tree grew in the front garden of my childhood home. It was therefore normal to us kids, but I don’t recall ever having seen one anywhere else until I was an adult. Just the other day “pomegranates from Joe’s farm” were on sale in my local (and completely adorbs) corner store, and it got me thinking about how common they have been, especially in Australia, over the last few decades, so I decided to find out a little more. I began my research the way all good research should begin, and called my mum for a chat. She had grown up in the same house, and I was curious to know how much she remembered of the pomegranate tree in the garden. It wasn’t there when she was a child, but it was there when she and my father bought the house from my grandfather and moved in when I was a baby. So how did it get there? Pomegranates are not a very 'Anglo’ fruit, so would, I thought, have been a little unusual in suburban Adelaide back in the day. According to mum*, the plant was pop...

Welcome to Girlbooker's Tea and Toast! I have started this blog to try, in a small way, to bring my experience of the internet back into balance.  In the mornings when I am getting ready for work, it's a bit of a whirlwind but if I am lucky then I find five minutes of quiet and calm as I have my tea and toast. It isn't really long enough to read a book so I default more often than I would like to scrolling aimlessly through Facebook or Twitter on my phone. I am hoping to post a little something here from time to time that is thought provoking, funny, or inspiring and takes no more than five minutes to read. Something to start the day the right way. I hope you'll join me!