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No Tea Party!

8/10/2014

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PictureQuel horreur!
This is a subject dear to my heart, a matter NEVER to be trifled with and one of great importance to most of us Brits. It’s a subject I’ve raised and celebrated before on this blog - however, this posting is sadly not concerned with celebration! 

As previously mentioned we recently returned from our annual summer holidays (see Bavarian Hols!) and a thoroughly enjoyable time it was too! The location, accommodation, food etc. were all quite faultless, ten out of ten! However, there was one area where I am reluctantly forced to shake my head in despair - to award, as the old Eurovision Song Contest cliché goes, ‘nil points’. I sincerely hope that I’ve fully communicated the sheer importance and gravity of this issue. It is a problem that, despite a personal appreciation for almost all things European, continues to magnify the relatively small distance occupied by the English Channel, forcing a giant chasm between mainland Europe and our island breed. And it’s not the first time in our history that this seemingly slight matter,as some may view it, has caused strife and difficulty - great Chinese dynasties once strove to keep its secrets hidden from the British Empire; people have lied, stolen and smuggled it to gain possession of it; a rather famous War of Independence was reputedly triggered because of it. You guessed it: Tea! 

You may think as you read, gentle reader, that I’m composing this piece with my tongue firmly planted in the side of my cheek - but you couldn’t be further from the truth! 

On numerous visits to Boulogne or Calais over the years I have often had cause to reflect on the number of cups of tea served to British visitors in French cafes - over the years, tens of millions I expect! Is it British phlegm, or just our national reluctance to complain and make a fuss that has allowed some truly awful cups of tea (criminally bad in my view!) to be tendered in our direction? Are the waiters too busy shrugging their shoulders with Gallic indifference to notice the look of sublime joy on our British faces as we rest our tired bones in their cafes and order a restorative cuppa - but don’t they also subsequently notice the dashed hopes, the look of panic in the eyes as our drink appears and we observe with horror the rapidly cooling glass of hot water with its tea bag neatly wrapped-up beside it on the saucer? I must confess, dear reader, in my bitterest moments to wondering if they do it on purpose - but surely not, after all, I mean Agincourt was an awfully long time ago, and anyway it’s not just confined to the French, actually it’s not just a European thing - the same thing happened to us in cafes in the US where in all other areas great service ruled the day! 

I love coffee but at breakfast I MUST drink tea - anything else imbibed first thing can upset my day. I confess I almost cracked this holiday - I mean fourteen breakfasts where I was forced to infuse a tea bag in a pot of tepid water is almost too much for any Brit to bear ! I wonder if it might be possible to make it compulsory EU Law for all hotel and restaurant staff outside the UK to read George Orwell’s essay on the art of tea making? He was pretty fanatical about how to make a cup of tea and clearly stated how the pot containing an appropriate measure of the noble leaves should be brought to the boiling water - never the other way round! 

The couple from the Wirral on a nearby table never drank anything but fruit juice or water at breakfast time. My wife Judith said something to them about us not being able to drink coffee first thing. 

“Yes, we’re the same,” the wife of the couple replied. 

“But you’re not drinking anything hot,” Judith said. 

The woman nodded sagely, “We bring our own,” she said.


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A Nice Cup of Tea

17/4/2013

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PictureGreat Aunt (Bopa) Mary 1887-1972 (c.1964)
My Great Aunt Mary, who often bore a taciturn expression, even at those times when there was a twinkle in her eye, liked nothing better than a cup of tea. She was often heard to declare that the only thing that got her through the war years was a nice cup of tea! She meant WW2 and the rationing that was imposed on everyone - just 2 ozs of tea (about 50g) each week, used sparingly was possibly
just enough for three or four cups a day (about a third of my daily intake). I think Adolf Hitler made a bad misjudgement when he attacked the ships bringing
us our tea supplies - in fact, he couldn't have picked a better way of getting our British backs up and inducing the bitterest anger in our bulldog breed. Without any prejudice intended towards tea drinkers from other lands, I hold an
unshakeable belief that you have to be from these Isles to fully appreciate the significance of Great Aunt Mary's remark about 'a nice cup of tea'. I mean to
say, ever heard anyone describe a cup of coffee as nice? Come off it! I seriously don't think so. And don't get me wrong, I enjoy drinking this too. You often hear superlatives used to describe a particularly good cup of coffee, like 'best' 'excellent' 'wonderful' - it can even be described as 'mean' (suggesting it has really hit the required spot). However, the adjective 'nice', and I don't care how prejudicial this may sound, is only ever applicable to just one
beverage, and that's tea!
 
Perhaps the unpredictable British weather is to a large degree responsible for our devotion to the drink. On those dismal days when the sky is grey, and the damp seems to have crept into your bones and you feel like hurling yourself at the ground and sobbing, a cup of tea is sometimes the last defence, the only thing capable of reviving the spirits enough to carry on. I am certainly not alone in my appreciation of tea. The great writer George Orwell wrote an essay on the subject; strangely enough, his was entitled A Nice Cup of Tea too. He set down eleven points that in his opinion had to be strictly adhered to in order to produce the perfect cup. Some people might describe this attention to detail as fanatical, and I might well agree - but this happens to be tea we're talking about!
 
I am not alone either:
 
"Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea."
- Sydney Smith, A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
 
"We had a kettle; we let it leak:
Our not repairing made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week ...
The bottom is out of the Universe."
-  Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling
 
"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."
- C S Lewis
 
Tea hee hee!


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Great Coffee Made Easy

5/2/2012

1 Comment

 
PictureI'll take the one on the left
I’ve always tended to go for things I like in a big way. I suppose this could be a good and a bad thing. I expect it’s a necessary quality if you want to write a novel and what’s more get better at doing so.  I’ve not to date found any alternative (and believe me I’ve tried) for the hard work it takes to get better at something. I heard someone say something on the radio a while ago about it requiring somewhere in the region of ten thousand hours to approach a level of competency in a chosen field. I think I can agree with that. I bet Leonardo did his ten-thousand. He may have had a bit of a head-start on the rest of us what with being a genius and all, but the muscles in the hand and arm don’t perform exactly how you want them to just because you happen to be a genius – they have to be trained and conditioned through a lot of practice.
 
Anyway, I digress; this post is supposed to be about great coffee. I love the stuff. I don’t drink too much of it though (see opening sentence about going for things in a big way!). Many years ago I developed a very unsettling twitch under my left eye. I thought I must be stressed-out almost to breaking point, until I paused to consider whether the fifteen cups of strong coffee I tended to drink each day might have something to do with aforementioned twitch.
 
Life lesson: ten-thousand hours of coffee drinking won’t  increase your ability to enjoy the stuff or in any way improve your skill at drinking it. In fact, pursue the ten-thousand hours rule here and you may end  up in a strait-jacket, or worse still, find yourself in a straight hexagonal box!
 
Sometimes, not too often, something comes your way in life and it’s magic first time. The IT guy who told me about his affection for coffee and first mentioned the
Aeropress, struck me as someone who (though probably not ten-thousand) had very likely chalked up a lot of hours in his quest for the perfect cup. It was nearly my son’s birthday and being a fellow coffee aficionado I bought him one and then invited myself round to his flat for a taster. Never a bad idea, I’ve learned, to try untested things (preferably non-lethal) out on your children! The result was that I went home and ordered one for myself as well as a milk frother for my wife, who prefers a latte to the straight Americano I go for.
 
Result: smiley wifey and smiley me, in coffee heaven at an incredibly affordable price! As another fan puts it on their packaging, “… it produces a better espresso shot than many home machines that cost twenty or thirty times as much.”
 
I should point out that I am not in the employ of
Aerobie, the people who make the Aeropress. I just believe credit should be given where credit is due.
 
Genius!



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