Stardate March 27th 2007, and my blog begins with a glass of tea. It’s mid-afternoon, and I’ve just opened up a packet of Phoenix Honey Orchard oolong tea. Smelling the leaves in the packet is a moment of happy reverie, rather like teasing your nose with an unlit cigar; nature’s message is at its most complex and beautiful then. (Bread and coffee too, no?) Even so, I can barely believe that tea, natural tea, the unadulterated leaf of the Camellia sinensis bush, can truly smell as enticingly peachy as these long black twists of leaf do. Who needs the spray-on essence of flavoured teas?

The infused liquor in the glass is pale green-gold, full of light orchard refreshment, brimming with calm. This comes from Jing Tea in London, and you could have it sent to you anywhere in the world: www.jingtea.com. There will be lots more on tea from me this year, as I hope to tread some of China’s tea paths in May. China, few yet realise, is to the tea world what France is to wine: a treasure chest of the strange and the beautiful. And tea (unlike coffee) really can be as complex and various as wine.

What else? I quietly celebrated the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome on March 25th 2007, in contrast to most of my compatriots. Britons seem to me to be, in their much touted scepticism and rancour concerning the European Union, victims of one of the most remarkable propaganda campaigns waged anywhere in the ‘free world’ over the last two decades. (Propaganda and democracy are, of course, as compatable as propaganda and totalitarianism; in some ways, more so, since the chance to purchase propaganda of our own volition amid the democratic babble is emotionally pleasurable, whereas having propaganda foisted on one in a totalitarian system predisposes the consumer to cynicism.) Perhaps institutions — by their nature imperfect — are always hard to like, but this particular institution has brought great benefits to what was a deeply troubled continent over the last 50 years.

And seeing Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, the old enemies of Northern Ireland’s ‘troubles’, agree to talk to each other about a subject as tedious as water rates is another reason to be cheerful.

Things will get worse, of course, but a little spring brightness after the long dark days is always welcome.