Tea Love

I can’t stand people who don’t do the classic British things right. I’m not talking about the everyday things which are of no consequence, I’m talking about the things which make our world go round. And what most people don’t realise is this: it all has a knock-on effect. Consequently, whole streets can be contaminated by bad habits. One of these bad habits—a polite way of putting it I think—is drinking tea so quickly that it doesn’t touch the sides.

I blame our drink culture. Down it, Down it! All that palava. It’s made our British eyes convert the image of an intensely lovely things—TEA—into an image of any old hot-drink. But tea is not Ovaltine, people. And tea is not hot-chocolate. While these two evening staples have never become a part of daily life, tea wasn’t so lucky. It got in with the wrong crowd, was mistreated, and by the early 90s was more often seen in a plastic cup as an appropriate packaging solution than the mug it deserves.

Speed-drinking tea is despicable. There is not other word for it. And the problem has spiraled out of control now to such an extent that the magical recipe of outstanding tea—brewed for NO LESS THAN EIGHT MINUTES—has been replaced by new-fangled vending machine methods which pervert the process, encouraging office workers to indulge in a cup of something the original tea inventors wouldn’t even recognize.

Also despicable is the idea of using powdered-milk in tea, a crime so heinous that many victims truly believe that this is the way tea should be, and what’s more, they keep coming back over and over again! And that is the cruel fact. We have strayed too far from the quality tea path now to pretend that getting back on it will be an easy thing. It will take dedication, people, but it’s never too late to start trying.