Oh DDB, well I am coming to Britain then, just for the good company appreciating tea!
I can still remember, maybe 1950 so I would have been five years old...sitting around the kitchen table with all the grown-up ladies, drinking my very first ever cup of tea...talking, laughing, oh such a special rite-of-passage...
Then age 13, participating in the high tea ceremony at the Empress Hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia. I bought some Murchie's Jasmine Tea on that excursion, it was like heaven. And my mother purchased eight fine bone china teacups, all the way from England.
Now I still drink tea every day, and one favourite is Stash brand, Earl Grey Double Bergamot. For some, Earl Grey is an acquired taste, but I loved it immediately.
My son likes Earl Grey.. i hate it :P But I too remember the right of passage .. children rarely like tea.. but there seems to be a time when suddenly the tea craving clicks in :) I am still enjoying the relatively recent tea appreciation my daughter now has.. she likes to be woken in the morning to come down for a cup of tea... and on exam days I make especially sure she has a cup of tea before she sets off
Hi DDB, I just looked up Earl Grey on the Internet...one of the origin stories is that at Howick Hall, the Grey family seat in Northumberland, the water was so lime tasting that finally someone started blending in the bergamot as camouflage!
Then Lady Grey started serving the tea to guests in London...and off it went, 'round the world, ending up in the very teapots of people like me...
I once ran with a group who called themselves The Bullants. They ran (still do, 40 years later) in the roughest terrain and their motto was, "Where a tree can grow a bullant can go."
They were a very informal group and they had one rule but it was inviolable. "No bullant shall, at any time or for any reason, ever refuse a cup of tea."
I've actually a mug of hot milk sweetened with honey at my side as I type this, but no, I'd never be fed up with a nice cup of tea!
Ordinary tea served hot that is, not iced, though I can drink cold tea. (And often do by accident, as I concentrate on whatever I am doing and forget the cuppas next to me until it's gone cold!)
I'm not keen on Earl Grey or these various fruit / herbal "teas", though.
I've a friend in the building trade who told me a tale of he and a colleague painting a large staircase. They broke off to make a mug of tea each then carried on painting, chatting as they did so, taking a sip of tea at intervals....
Pete said he heard the familiar sounds of painting from his mate, suddenly ending in a strange "splosh" noise followed by some decidedly, umm, 'technical', language.
Yes - the bloke had put mug of tea next to tin of paint, both by his side, in easy reach without having to look too hard....... !
I can't think of any other simple beverage that attracts such a range of tastes! Beers and wines come in different flavours anyway, and tea has its own blends, but I mean in the results from the same packet of tea, bottle of milk and kettle of water. Some of the company will want their tea so weak it's nearly lager-coloured and "has to be helped up the spout" (as our Mam would have said), whilst others insist it's "builders' tea" - so strong it's almost stewed and too bitter for others sharing that same potful!
Plingsby 