How may I approach such an exalted topic? Do I dare presume
to add to the reams already penned on the subject? Perhaps the via negativa is the way to go, since for
some reason it seems easier to state what
a thing is not than what it is: and
so, ladies and gentlemen, I give you My Two Worst Ever Cups of Tea.
How well I remember my first cuppa in America: the memory
pains me deeply, indeed, the wounds have scarcely healed after all these years.
The waitress seemed to smirk as she delivered me a stone cold cup and saucer, on
which lay a dispirited-looking teabag still in its paper envelope. Next to it,
a small metal teapot betrayed no reassuring signs of heat; indeed, I could
touch it quite comfortably with my bare fingertips.
Now, the first and cardinal rule of making tea, dinned into
me since early childhood by every significant adult in my life, is this: Always
Use Freshly Boiling Water.
Aghast at such a flagrant breaking of this law, but keenly
aware that every passing second only made matters worse, I hastened the tea bag
from its envelope into the cup. As expected, when I added the
"boiling" contents of the teapot, the only perceptible change was a
slight staining of the water in the immediate vicinity of the tea bag. Leaving
it for several minutes did little to help, and neither did the addition of the
synthetic contents of the little plastic pot of “creamer”.
It was the most insipid cup of tea I have ever had the
misfortune to drink.
At the opposite end of the tea-making spectrum lies the choice
brew served up by the zookeepers at Bristol Zoo. In his youth, my brother Ian
(same name as our Eldest Son Iain, just with a different spelling) got a summer
job tending the zoo’s animal inhabitants, and among his tasks was that of Chief
Teamaker for the Animal Keepers’ Tea Break.
As he was to discover, there was quite an art to this, a strict protocol
that came as something of a shock to Ian’s system, and had to be followed to
the letter.
First, the pot. This was lined with a thick, tannin-rich
scum, built up over years (decades?) of use and
no cleaning whatsoever. Ian’s life nearly came to an untimely end the day
he tried to help by giving the pot a good scour . . . His vocabulary was
greatly enlarged that day, but there weren’t too many places he was welcome to
try it out: certainly not at the Prentice family dinner table.
Next, the tea leaves which had to be PGTips (loose, of
course—no sissy teabags for this rugged bunch.) How many teaspoons? Well, there’s
a daft question! Just pour in the right amount, straight from the packet. If
your spoon can stand up in the finished slurry, it’s strong enough. At this stage,
milk and sugar were added and the whole given a thorough stir before the final
stage: filling the pot with freshly boiling water (at last, something we can
agree on!) stirring it once more and leaving
it to steep for at least fifteen minutes to allow the full glory of the tannins
to develop. Not tannic acid, mind you; this is not found in tea. Tannins, or thearubigins, are found a-plenty, and may
cause antioxidant activity. Hooray! Tea’s a health food—I always knew as much!
Somewhere between these two extremes
lies the magical brew favored by Mrs. Patmore, Agatha Christie (“Tea! Bless ordinary
everyday afternoon tea!") as well as by my Welsh grandmother, whose every
afternoon was punctuated at 4 o’clock on the dot by a singsong, “Now
what I’d like is a nice cup of tea.” All other activity came to a halt until
Gran had her Willow Pattern teacup in hand and an
episode of The Archers, an early farming soap opera that she followed
faithfully, on the radio.
But what went into making that daily
cup of ambrosia will have to wait until Part The Second.
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