I’m just so incredibly desperate to break the writer’s block I’m going to keep a jokey promise I made to Debi Linton a week ago. The promise was to write about mug bonding. You know, the phenomenon where a mug – which is at the end of the day is nothing more than an inanimate receptacle – ends up becoming something precious and personal. Why do we bond with mugs in this way? Why is there such an appalling taboo against using other people’s mugs? I mean, if it’s clean it’s clean… is there some Darwinian advantage to establishing a bond of trust with our beloved day to day crockery?
So I present to you my 3 favourite mugs and 2 mugs I just refuse to drink out of. I really am that stuck for things to write about. Please, please, please don’t waste your time reading this.
A cheapo mug from Tesco this, but it wins by virtue of it’s sheer capacity. Typically large mugs suffer rapid heat loss due to the larger surface area of tea exposed to the air. This mug uses height to achieve the additional capacity, without losing heat any more rapidly than a normal mug. The Vin Diesel of Tea receptacles.
A genuine BBC mug, this is stolen and officially does not belong to me. Yet, through the magic of mug bonding, it’s sort of become mine by default. The BBC mug boasts much thicker ceramic, thus earning itself the title of Best Heat Retaining Mug. Your tea stays hot for longer with the BBC. Plus it’s got a BBC logo on it and I’m still enough of a sad little nobody to think that’s kinda neat.
Here I have no idea why I like this mug. Perhaps it’s the spooky frog head. Perhaps it’s the dark blue. Perhaps it’s the thickness of the ceramic (this is no cheap corporate tat)? I honestly don’t know, but yet another stolen mug becomes mine through ‘getting in their first’ and bonding with it, although I avoid using this one unless there’s only Bad Mugs left. This may be the nearest thing to a genuinely shared mug in Gore Towers.
It never ceases to amaze me that there’s still people who think buying people age inappropriate presents is funny. This is why I very nearly sent this mug to one of my brothers as a Christmas present but thought better of it. It lives in my cupboard, and despite being a perfectly acceptable mug I just will not drink out of it. First it says, “Gran” which is off-putting in itself, but it’s the “Pots of Love” tag-line that brings out the full nausea. It’s from the delicate school of crockery – I find that it’s unable to retain heat, I burn my hand on it, and it doesn’t actually hold enough tea to justify the effort of brewing up in the first place.
No. Just… no. The sheer horribleness of this mug is enough to put even this most hardened and enthusiastic tea drinker off her tea. When there’s only this and the Gran mug left, that’s when the Fairy washing up liquid comes out. Just no.Update: I’m at work so I’m going to steal a few minutes to add this:
If we had dæmons in this universe, this would be mine. It’s part of my soul – my work mug. A classic of the work mug genre, it features a pithy joke that expresses a feature of my own personality, and boy does this one do exactly that. It was a present, bought by someone who saw it and ‘thought of me.’ It has excellent heat retention and enjoys a fairly generous capacity. It’s also mine and anyone else drinking from it would suffer scary wrath.You all know this is heading towards me selling mugs don’t you? 
Roger Thornhill said...
19 Jun 09 at 5:32 am
Mug Bonding.
Something that comes naturally to LibLabCon and now the BNP, methinks. How else to get their vote?
Costigan Quist said...
19 Jun 09 at 7:19 am
If you can just use your mug preference as a metaphor for how libertarians are right and social liberals (not to mention socialists, etc.) are all fools, you’ll be flying :0)
Stu said...
19 Jun 09 at 7:23 am
But what about mug liberty, Charlotte? What of the right of mugs to be free mugs?
My favourite mug is a cavernous beast of a receptacle, with thick walls and the shape of a penguin sticking out of it. My daughter painted it.
Here, take a look – you know you want to:
http://stuartsharpe.co.uk/imgs/penguin-mug.jpg
http://stuartsharpe.co.uk/imgs/penguin-mug1.jpg
We have other mugs, but none are quite so stylish.
Constantly Furious said...
19 Jun 09 at 7:29 am
How did you know about my ceramo-fetish? Those pictures, that text … this is the best mugP0rn I’ve seen in a long time. Dear god, I’m now slumped in front of my PC, sweaty, exhausted and badly dehydrated. Time for a cup of tea, in my favourite …. ohhhhhhh …..
asquith said...
19 Jun 09 at 8:08 am
You’re not proper into your mug until you start taking it to social occasions & cafes, restaurants etc & demanding to be served out of it or else you won’t drink
Left Outside said...
19 Jun 09 at 10:29 am
It’s true, you’ve not really bonded with a mug until you’ve taken it for an outing. You have to walk to your local shop with a Mug of hot Yorkshire beside you to really understand.
David Chiverton said...
19 Jun 09 at 10:40 am
I’ve had a mug-seperation, I allowed my head to get turned by a newer, younger kit-kat mug and abandoned my old favourite. After a few months the excitement wore off and I went back to my old one but things were never the same.
Roger Thornhill said...
19 Jun 09 at 3:13 pm
You cannot truly bond with a mug that is chosen for you or presented as a limited choice from a pre-selected list of approved, socially aware/justice/rights/diverse mugs, unless in some weird form of “Stockholm Mug Syndrome”.
p.s. My mug for many years (c1990-) was a Far Side mug – “boneless chicken ranch”. If I could have got a mug with one of those – boy I forget the cartoonists name, but they were surreal, faux 1930′s, boys own meets Cthulhu.
jd said...
19 Jun 09 at 10:04 pm
Many years ago, Laissez-Faire Books used to sell a set of Hayek, Friedman, Mises, and Buchanan mugs which I still find provoke discussion amongst the right guests! Just a shame there wasn’t a Rothbard one.
patently said...
20 Jun 09 at 12:25 pm
I sense a potential meme. Who do you plan to challenge to list their best and worst mugs, then?
Charlotte Gore said...
20 Jun 09 at 12:42 pm
I couldn’t possibly inflict this on anyone else. Memes are t’evil!
Roger Thornhill said...
20 Jun 09 at 4:58 pm
It has been bugging me.
Glen Baxter.
SaltedSlug said...
21 Jun 09 at 10:45 am
Rolling with Costigan Quist’s metaphor, can you imagine anything worse than a communal, socialised mug?
Horrifying.
Charlotte Gore said...
21 Jun 09 at 12:13 pm
Crikey. Perhaps that’s the universal metaphor against socialism to use? “Socialism? That’s like sharing mugs! You don’t want that!”
SaltedSlug said...
21 Jun 09 at 12:22 pm
‘Tis the ultimate argument destroyer
patently said...
22 Jun 09 at 10:51 am
I like that argument
How about:
“Would you share your mug with this man?”