North Tea Power- an antidote to autumn darkness

A shoot-from-the-hip photo in North Tea Power.

With the clocks turning back last Sunday we are now cruelly plunged into darkness by the end of office hours. As the dark gloom descends by 5 o'clock a way to counteract its effects is over a cafétiere of loose leaf mint tea at North Tea Power on Tib Street.

North Tea Power is one of my favourite café names and its warmth is ideal for an autumn evening. I feel at home surrounded by the laptop typing tea drinkers, artists and their design portfolios and the usual suspects of nicely quirky Northern Quarter dwellers. This ideal post-work pick me up was made even better by a catch up with my friend Miriam (published writer and blogger at Little Bones and more), before she headed back across the North Sea to Germany.

My teenagers don't get the café name so, for non Brits and the under 30s, North Tea Power is a play on words of North Sea Power - which (as well as being similar in name to a great band, British Sea Power) came into the vernacular in the 1970s with the discovery and exploitation of North Sea oil reserves. I hope it will soon be in everyday usage again and applied to harnessing the massive potential of wind power from the North Sea.

My latest Smitten by Britain guest post take us back to a summer's weekend.  A toast to the Gower Coast is at: www.smittenbybritain.com/2012/11/a-toast-to-the-gower-coast/