STRAIGHT TLAK
Tea Time
The waitress waited patiently while I tried to make my mind up. I looked up at her apologetically and she smiled at me and told me to take my time. I stared at the menu and perused the page completely at a loss. You might be of the opinion that I was at a restaurant with a menu written in a foreign language and thinking that it might have been a bit foolish on my part to go somewhere where I did not quite understand what the menu said. You would be wrong. I was just trying to order a cup of tea! Who would have thought it would be so complicated.
I am sure those of you who are tea drinkers will agree that the first cup of tea of the day is a must, and sadly for many, our brains do not seem to start functioning until that first injection of caffeine into our system. There is also no feeling like coming home after a long and particularly hectic day and sitting down, preferably with your feet up and savouring a hot cup of tea. In my case, it has to be a nice strong cup with a dash of milk and one spoon of sugar (okay, maybe two spoons). Over here strong sweet milky tea is usually referred to as builder's tea and definitely hits the spot. Not to be confused with the concoction I have often been served up which masquerades as tea. It seems to be made up of hot water and milk with a hint of tea.
I have established over the years that no amount of coffee shops strategically positioned on every street in London and cute little cafes dotted around the place with beautiful people sipping their cappuccinos and lattes will affect my loyalties and I am and always will be a tea drinker. I do concede that I love the smell of coffee but the actual flavour and taste do not have the same affect on me as a well brewed pot of tea. Plus it's not the same thing dunking a toast biscuit or digestive biscuit into a cup of coffee. I have to admit I also find walking into a coffeehouse such as Starbucks rather intimidating. I look at the names of the different types of coffee and suffer a slight panic attack. To add to that there is always someone in front of the queue ordering a 'non fat toffee nut latte with three pumps of syrup' or a 'venti skinny caramel macchiato with extra foam' or something as incomprehensible. What does it all mean!
Over a decade or so ago, it would have been a simple case of telling the waitress whether or not you wanted your tea with milk and sugar. Fast forward a few years and you might have had the slightly wider choice between regular black tea, Earl Grey, Jasmine tea, or maybe even green tea! Still not too hard to choose from, I can get my head around that tea selection.
Fast forward once again to present day and the list on my menu had Black Tea, Oolong Tea, Green Tea and White Tea. Did it stop there? Of course it did not. How about some fruit infusion teas or herbal infusions; blackcurrant, chamomile, peppermint or maybe some Rooibos! By this stage I was getting frustrated with my inability to decide. Obviously Shakespeare's Hamlet and I have much in common when it comes to decision making.
I thought it would be a good idea to narrow my options and go for the black tea. I looked at the waitress and said the magic words, “a pot of black tea please”. I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. The poor woman could now go about her business and I could stop feeling like a tea ignoramus. She bent over and turned the page for me and pointed at another list and asked me what kind of black tea I wanted. Would I like some English Breakfast tea or maybe a light and refreshing cup of Darjeeling tea. If I wanted something a little stronger, how about a slightly more robust flavour that I would get from the Assam Tea. There was always the option of going for the Imperial Ceylon or Ceylon Silver Tip (yes there were choices within choices)!
Talking of different types of tea, my son came home the other day with a container of Monkey Picked Tea. On the tin it stated that the tea had been picked by monkeys, contained powerful antioxidants and had a light delicate flavour. This is supposed to be a rare Chinese tea that is carefully picked by specially trained monkeys in a remote mountain region of China. According to some legends it appears that the monkeys were first used to collect tea ten centuries ago. This came about due to the fact that they saw their master trying to reach some tea growing wild on a mountain face and the monkey climbed up the steep face and collected the tea growing there and brought it down to his master. As if we didn't have enough choices already.
Hailing from a tea drinking, tea producing and tea exporting nation, I felt like I was letting down the home team by this endless procrastination. So I took the sensible route and did a quick ‘eenie meenie minee mo’ in my head and chose the Assam tea.
I could have punched the air at this point with the sheer relief of having decided on my tea. The waitress wrote it down in her little pad of paper and then to my horror turned another page on my menu. “How about some cake”, she said in a cheery voice. “We have some Victoria sponge, red velvet, chocolate fudge cake, passion fruit cheese cake, blueberry muffins...”
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