A Nice Cup of Tea

The Twenty-Seventh of November Two Thousand and Twelve. Tuesday.
 
I have come back to tea. I’m trying to remember why exactly I left, but the memories (as always) are a little bit fuzzy.


I know some of the contributing factors. Tea and cereal are about the only things I use milk for, and breakfast is usually me chomping down a bagel as I rush out the door on my way to work, so I’m lucky to get through half a pint of milk before it goes off. Annndd, I like black coffee so it becomes easier just to go with that and not bother getting any milk


I do enjoy a bit of the old rooibos (and, as the synchronicities that afflict this blog continue to unfold I have just been brought a mug of redbush tea even as we speak. Spooky, huh?). That's pleasant enough to drink without milk too. In fact, now that I think about it I do remember one of the reasons I cut back on my tea consumption. After about your fifth cup - and believe me at work, sometimes it gets as far as that fifth cup - it does tend to churn your tum up quite a bit. But then again, the same can be said about coffee. And sometimes, redbush just doesn't have the 'kick' that's necessary to get you through the day.

So I'm back on the tea. Not that I was completely off it. Sometimes a mug would turn up with the occasional cooked breakfast and it would be impolite to turn one down when offered at a friend's house.  When I was in charge of my own beverages I wouldn't bother though. Until one day, the oppressive weight of cultural expectation became too much and I gave in to the lure of Rosie Lee.

I think my recent reintroduction to The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was my gateway drug to the East India company's famous export (not opium - the other one. No, not indigo or saltpetre either. The other other one. Oh, for Glob's sake, the blogdule's about tea, it's tea, isn't it?). Douglas Adams liked his tea, didn't he? (I'm thinking here of the "one lump or two" joke in the unfinished Doctor Who story Shada, among others). Certainly the part of him that was a bit Arthur Dent did. In fact, up until not getting very far with a physics degree I thought Brownian motion was so called because the tea in which the Guide suggested you dangle the atomic vector plotters of a Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson brain to generate finite amounts of improbability was brown.

I find it staggering now to think that when I first drank tea as a child I actually took sugar. That that was eventually phased out is the one claim to maturity I can make about my self. I know some people enjoy very strong tea (in my family, if you are served with what was clearly the dregs of the kettle resulting in a less than full mug of v strong tea you are obliged to admonish the charperson as follows: "what's that? Half a cup of mud!") but I prefer it 'as it comes' - that is to say, of medium strength. And, as the American Pop Cultural Attaché well knows, I am a mugman rather than a teacup person.

I am lucky enough to live just around the corner from Scarborough's charming Francis tea rooms. There they serve loose tea - pots, strainer and all - which is all very good on occasion but I firmly believe that teabag technology has advanced to such a point nowadays that the small amount of extra quality this affords is barely measurable. I do have one of those metal tea ball infuser things that I used with some caramel red bush I once bought (it's a bit too sweet, though. I'm weighing up whether to get some plain rooibos and mix it to make a less sickly blend) but for the most part it's bags in this house.

And some nice biscuits, preferably garibaldis.

Of course, the definitive work on tea is the essay A Nice Cup of Tea by George Orwell. I think if you follow the instructions contained therein you can't go wrong.

Right, kettle's on.

More soonliest.

Aquae Sulis

The Nineteenth of September Two Thousand and Eleven. Monday. 

Let’s start off with some Divine Comedy. 

I have a very compact and bijou flat, with all the mod cons (I even have a kitchen in my living room – how space age is that?) and apart from the damning cold which is once more beginning to encroach upon us (the tiny wall-mounted electric heaters are barely adequate) it suits my current needs quite nicely. 

Where it falls down a bit though is in the hygiene stakes. Not just the general unsanitary detritus you’d typically get in single male accommodation. No, it’s just that if I want or need to have good scrub I have only a shower with which to do so. 

A shower. 

Oh, how I long for a bath. I like a good soak. You can have a nap, read a (comic) book, listen to the radio. Have a bit of a think while all the while getting cleaner, it’s marvellous. 

It’s a tricky equation getting the temperature right, mind. In anticipation of a good hour-plus long soak some discomfort might be experienced as you fill the tub with piping hot water. That scalding sensation will only last minutes and it is necessary to endure it to ensure as long as is possible is spent in the water before it becomes cold enough to give you various muscle cramps. 

These days I only ever get the chance for a bath when I’m visiting my parents or I’m on holiday. I’ll say one thing for my old friend Travelodge, they usually do you proud on the tub front. I got a good soak with my copy of Action Comics no1 in Edinburgh recently (not the original 1938 edition, naturally, but Grant Morrison’s superb entry into DC’s line-wide reboot (yes another Morrison title forming my Fifth Comic Book Recommendation). In fact, I think that was my last bath to date. 

The parental bath is good, but there your time will most likely be curtailed as you will not have sole use of the bathroom. Still, I like to get as long in as possible before someone starts hammering on the door.

When it comes to very long baths we all aim to emulate the Captain of the Golgafrincham B Ark off of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He knew how to drag out a bath. Let's see him in action:

Sigh.

Off to bed I go, and in the morning - a shower. But in my dreams I will be fully immersed and in the company of a rubber duck.

More soonliest.