My paternal grandfather, it is said, was in the kitchen at 6.30 sharp every morning ruling over his teapot like a despotic and jealous mandarin.
I am also famously addicted and am invariably portrayed in the family as a dozy dormouse curled up gently sozzled among the dregs of an over-sized tea cup.
The last time I was in my home-town, Birmingham, U.K., I demanded not one, but two cups of the old brew which has more resonance for me than any dozen of Proust’s madeleine biscuits.
No wonder then, when dear friends from Manchester visited us in Karmiel last month they brought with them an outsized box of tea bags which I keep firmly locked in the safe bearing my name.
It can only be because I am away in relentlessly warm and sunny Israel that I missed hearing the run-up to Britain's “International ‘A Nice Cup of Tea Day’” which took place yesterday.
In Britain they (the middle class ‘they’ anyway) still take their tea and tea-time very seriously and I have discovered that “each day day we sink 165 million cups of it. It’s our national drink – classless, timeless and tasty”.
If it’s supposed to be a classless pastime, what sort of a peasant takes Earl Grey tea with milk? It should be drunk with deepest concentration, solely black with lemon – no children, no pets – and definitely no dunking of any sort of biscuit allowed!
The feature I read listed all sorts of grand hotels where one may sit in sumptuous surroundings, enjoying a full traditional English afternoon tea with everything from thin-cut crust-less sandwiches to crumpets. Certainly I remember doing that when Brian and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary amid the fading splendour of Brighton’s Grand Metropole Hotel.
Now here’s a thought: If there’s a regular market and I could stay awake long enough to put the kettle on, I might be persuaded to open an English-style tea-shop here in Karmiel and call it … “The Dormouse”.
msniw
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