Once upon a time there was a little blue cup called - Gertrud. It was made in a dinky, always clinking and sometimes clattering pottery in Milano. The hands of the old clay master Don Massimo shaped her body, perfect for warm baths of English tea bags.

As the cup got bigger and with each filling of Yorkshire tea, pink feel-good dots slowly covered her blue paint, it was time to move out into the world. Since Gertrud loved English tea so much, it was also clear where the journey should go - off to the island.

But such a long journey was terribly dangerous for a small, fragile teacup like our Gertrud. Fortunately, Jacomo, the secretly hidden blubber whale, knew a solution. Snuggled in his enormous mouth in his even more enormous tongue, Jacomo carried our Gertrud, whom he affectionately called Trudy, as did everyone Gertrud counted among her friends, all the way to the beach at Aberaeron on the coast of Wales. From there, our little cup wanted to make its way to England.

Things turned out differently. Theodore the red kite was supposed to carry Trudy by her hanger all the way to London. But the bird of prey didn't have the firmest grip and so it happened that when he spotted a mouse, he flew close over fields and hills and just as they were flying over abundantly tall willow bushes, Trudy's little hanger slipped out of his graspers. Phew - that almost went wrong, but the soft willow bushes caught our Trudy gently.

A little dazed, our little cup came back to her senses and there - in the middle of willow nowhere, Trudy found her new home. The people who lived here shared their love of unspoilt nature, literature and art with all the people who came to them. They even invited them into their dinky library and this is exactly where they brought our Trudy, who had fallen from heaven.

A sleepy village, an adventurous little cuppa and a cosy-looking library - that cried out for a Yorkshire tea bath. Our Trudy had never had a more relaxing bath and there - all alone and lonely, stood an even smaller cup on the shelf. As if it was practising being alone.

Little Cup Fred could no longer remember the day it had moved into this bookshelf. Perhaps it had been pottered right here? The little hanger always buried in the greatest books, Fred soaked up the lines of the greatest poets and thinkers of the UK and Ireland. The words circled in the coffee and tea baths he took and never spilled over. A master of quotations. Whether Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde or Harold Pinter - Fred was the most educated cuppa the world had ever seen.

But one day, something was suddenly different. It was the day that a second cup moved into the library, that Fred began to find a mum. The first day of the rest of all days when Fred would no longer be alone - and Trudy? She quickly loved nothing more than little cuppa Fred.

What Trudy and Fred experienced together? That you will find out in numerous heart-pounding, roller-coaster adventures, we are happy to tell you one day.