Glorious blue sky and a scattering of snow this morning. Quite unexpected as it rained cats and dogs last night. I have woken later than usual - not quite true: I dozed to the radio for an hour before pattering through to the kitchen to make tea.

Tea: I've begun to use a glass teapot, and suddenly the descriptions of kinds of tea make sense - the golden glow of darjeeling, the redness of assam. I shall, I fear, become obsessive, but not a connoisseur: I like a jolly good English breakfast tea too much.

But finding good tea is proving difficult, which surprises me as tea is evidently becoming more and more popular, judging by the choice in teabags at supermarkets. There used to be a wonderful tea merchant in Edinburgh, which sold myriad teas, including coconut. I have yet to find anywhere else that sells coconut tea. There's a shop in Dundee that sells tea and coffee - leaf tea and coffee beans - as well as every kind of tea- and coffee-making utensil imaginable. This is one of the best kind of merchant because prices there show that tea is taken to be enjoyed by common or garden people like me, and not limited to the tastes of the wealthier echelons of British society, or something 'for best'.

So, every month, I travel to Dundee, to join the queue winding from a small dark shop, heady with roasting coffee beans, eavesdropping on others' conversations across the counter for hints about what to try next, and emerge with a bag full of the dark green packages the merchant has filled for me. I am becoming conversant with phrases like 'first flush', and am almost ready to refer to the colour of tea 'liquors'.

If I were naturally methodical, I'd no doubt develop some kind of strategy for exploring tea, but I'm not. I'm wooed by words, sipping from continent to continent, and colour to colour. It's hard not to be overwhelmed by choice, in the way I am overwhelmed by choice in wine. However: unlike wine, one (more accurately I) can improve knowledge of tea while both continuing a day job with at least a semblance of competence, and without leaving a bank balance in shreds.

I might start to allow my obsession, my romance with tea to infiltrate life more freely. I might, for example, choose to travel to places where one can find a good cup of tea. The best tea I had during my last trip was on the flight back: an indictment.