i have a mug that i drink my chai tea out of nearly every single morning. on the mug is vintage-style illustration of a squirrel, with the phrase 'born to dilly dally' written underneath it. i love it. it's probably my favourite mug.

one of the things i love most about it is that it's unlike much else i own. by that, i mean i didnt buy it because i'd typed 'minimalist kitchenware' into a search engine, or because one of the many interior decor accounts i follow tagged the brand on instagram. i came across this mug while dilly-dallying in a bonafide brick-and-mortar stationary shop, on a shelving unit with about 20 similar mugs, each with a cute illustration, cartoon character, or a lightly-humorous phrase such as "do you want to see me cry? because i will" and "sorry i'm late, i didn't want to come".

i silently lost my mind a bit, took a quick picture of it and then – like an idiot – left it there on the shelf.

it just felt too frivolous and unserious a purchase for a soon-to-be-married woman in her late 20s who has a tumble dryer and a 30-year mortgage. i hadn't examined this potential purchase against a vague mental model of my own 'taste' after seeing it in one of @thishouse3000s reels.

but i couldnt stop thinking about this stupid squirrel mug for the whole day. i'd gone all patrick bateman... the matte texture, the satisfying shape, the squirrel's quiet determination to dilly dally... i imagined my husband bringing me chai tea in this mug, and the quiet smile it would bring to my face every morning – even bigger than the quiet smile that i always get when my husband brings me chai tea. i even whatsapped the photo to my friend with the message 'ngl i cant stop thinking about this mug'. it just felt meant to be. after all, i was born to dilly dally.

but how did this mug fit into the carefully-curated aesthetic i'd worked so hard to maintain? would it go with my stoneware plates from made.com (rip) or my "scandi chic" white ikea mugs? what would it say about my taste in drinking vessels to the 2-3 people who regularly visit?

i haven't lived a social media free life since i logged into tumblr for the first time at age 14, and now i was supposed to trust my thoughts and feelings when it came to my own taste? i needed an algorithm to tell me that this was the mug i needed for self-actualisation, based on half-snippets of data that have assigned me a corner of the internet and tell me "this is who you are, and this is what you want to fill your home with."

when i got home, i had a word with myself and ordered the mug online. why had i been questioning this object that i'd turned around in my hands and felt my heart tug a little towards it? because it hadnt been presented to me by a capitalist robot that i inexplicably trust to know me better than i do?

the experience of finding a kinship with a real, tangible, physical object – rather than a product in a two-dimensional ad in 16:1 resolution – had felt so novel to me that i managed to convince myself that this would be an impulse purchase i'd instantly regret. 6 months on, and i don't regret it even a tiny bit. the novelty hasn't worn off. in fact, i'm drinking from my mug right now (while dilly-dallying, obviously).  looking at this mug still brings me a little bit of joy each day. of course it hasn't led me to full self-actualisation, but it does serve me a reminder – as well as tea, ha ha – to rebel against the social media machine and its reductionary idea of my "taste". i think that the reason we keep re-hashing the trends of the past is because we look at our parents and grandparents - how they cultivated their taste over time with each object they fell in love with in a shop window, a bric-a-brac box, or a shelf of mugs - and subconsciously wish that we knew ourselves that well.

so perhaps this novelty squirrel mug is exactly my taste, and i'm more than ok with that.

saturday 16 aug 2025

to remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant
– john berger, 1972

innocence is bliss
– thomas gray, 1742