Love is...

Why a cup of tea in bed in the morning out-ranks Hallmark sentiments. Plus a hot and spicy chocolate cake to warm the cockles of your heart.

Nearly every day of their married lives (or often enough for it to seem like it was every day) my father took my mother a cup of tea in bed in the morning. Such a small, simple thing and yet, such a grand gesture.

Image: David Mao for Unsplash

The situation was never reversed, at least not as far as I know. Mum getting up to take Dad a cup of tea was as unthinkable as her smoking a cigar or mowing the lawns. Sometimes, as the spoiled baby of the family, I was allowed to get into bed with Mum on a Saturday morning and receive a cup of tea too, in a miniature Crown Lynn cup and saucer. I still have this precious relic of that time; the cup is teal blue, the saucer is cream with a teal pattern radiating out from the centre. The tea was made in a pot and very occasionally there would be a thin slice of white bread and butter to go with it.

When my parents travelled overseas they took a portable tea-making kit with them, a sort of element prong that could be plugged into a hotel bathroom shaver’s plug. Thus fortified (and miraculously, never electrocuted), they would set about exploring the world.

From what my mother said, the tea making was learned behaviour. My father’s father had always started the day by taking his wife a cup of tea, so Dad assumed that this was what happened in all households. On reflection, I thought it did too. Sometimes, even now, when I’m half-asleep in the morning I hear the faint, far-off rumble of a boiling kettle, the tink-tink clink of cup on saucer. Some days it’s a dreamstate aural memory, but on some lucky days, a mug of tea will materialise on my bedside table.

Despite what Hallmark cards may tell us, roses and boxes of chocolates are not the glue that bonds us. It’s the small acts of love – the early morning cup of tea, the remembering to buy a certain sort of biscuit or putting an emergency beer in the freezer – that keep us together. Flowers and chocolates and grand gestures may be expected on Valentine’s Day, but there are 364 other days in the year in which boiling the kettle is just as lovable.

All that said, sometimes the way to someone’s heart is through cake. Specifically, chocolate cake. Here’s a hot and spicy little number to warm the cockles of the recipient’s heart (even if that recipient is you. Especially if that recipient is you.)

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Good Things

Miss Piggy, in a screenshot from The Muppet Show 2026 TV Special

‘It’s time to put on makeup, it’s time to light the lights…’

Nothing has made me happier in recent weeks than the reboot episode of The Muppet Show, in which all our friends are back to tread the boards at the Muppet Theatre. The voices may have changed a little, but the show’s cosy and gently subversive humour is still there in spades. This ‘pilot episode’ stars Sabrina Carpenter, who was born to go toe-to-trotter with Miss Piggy. A five-star delight, don’t miss it.

Sandwich

I finished this book early this morning, tears leaking onto the pillow in the half-dark. I’m a bit weary/wary of ‘midlife woman experiences trauma’ novels (unpopular opinion alert: I am possibly the only person in the world who admits to LOATHING Miranda July’s much-feted All Fours), but this is just magnificent. I can’t wait to read her new book, Wreck, but I might just go and re-read Sandwich again first. Sam Baker talks to Catherine Newman here - and Catherine herself has a brilliantly named newsletter here.

A very pretty cake tin

I bought a NordicWare Bundt tin from a charity shop in Finsbury Park, London, nearly 21 years ago. It felt like a rash way to spend £3 at the time, since we had no jobs and were sleeping in the living room of our friends’ tiny one-bedroom flat. While in a fancy kitchen shop recently I saw some very gorgeous tins like the one pictured above that now cost upwards of $100, so it was a very good investment. The moral of this story: the next time you see a good cake tin at an op shop, buy it!

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours. I hope there is a cup of tea in bed in your future.