The evening tea ritual

Most evenings around nine, I stop whatever I am doing and make a small pot of chamomile tea. The chamomile is loose, bought at a small herb shop near the canal, in a small paper bag that lasts perhaps two months. I use about two teaspoons of the dried flowers per cup. The water is just off the boil. The steep is six minutes — long enough to draw out the full flavour, not so long that the tea becomes bitter.

I add a small spoonful of honey to the pot while the tea is steeping. The honey is the same raw local honey I use for the face mask I have written about elsewhere. The combination of chamomile and honey is a classic, and there is reasonable evidence that both ingredients have mild sedative properties that prepare the body for sleep.

What the tea-making interruption does

Stops whatever I had been doing. The evening's small productive tasks — answering a few emails, finishing a small piece of writing, doing a small load of laundry — are interrupted by the small ten-minute pause to make and drink the tea. The interruption is, in itself, useful. The body and the mind, after a productive evening of small ongoing activity, both need a small explicit pause to start the wind-down.

The tea itself is a small additional pleasure. The chamomile is mild and faintly floral. The honey adds a small sweetness without overwhelming the herbal quality. The whole drink takes about fifteen minutes to drink slowly, which is enough to mark a small transition in the evening from active to quieter.

If you have struggled with the small transition from a productive evening to the wind-down before bed, try a small interruption like this. The specific drink is not important. The structural function — a small ten-minute pause around nine in the evening that is unmistakably the beginning of the night — is. The evening, given a small clear mid-point, organises itself more easily into a productive first half and a restorative second half.