An Englishman and His Tea

An Englishman and His Tea

As an Englishman I know without a shadow of a doubt certain unshakable truths. The sky is blue, buses and phone boxes are red, cricket is the sport of gentlemen, a mince meat pie at Mrs McGilligan’s Pie Shop will always cost two shillings and most importantly of all; there is no disaster that cannot be solved by a good cup of tea. The British Empire was built on tea. The humble tea bag cannot be improved upon. It is the pinnacle of hot beverage, backbone, courage and English honor making technology. It will never change.

Or so I thought. Now I don’t know which way is up or down, left or right. I simply do not know what to believe any more. It seems that like most things in this crazy modern world tea making technology has moved on.

Tea Stick

This “latest innovation in tea making,” otherwise known as the T-Stick (there goes English grammar and spelling as well), was given to me instead of a tea bag just the other day when I requested a cup of tea at Rotterdam train station. At first I thought the young lady was placing the paper sashay of sugar in to the boiling water and embarrassed myself by trying to stop her. This “improvement” is a fine example of the kind of anarchy that happens when we let young people listen to their Beatles and their David Bowies.

Honestly! What would the queen say if she knew?

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

41 Responses

  1. Probably the same thing she’d say when she finds out you’re spelling Britain, “Britian”

    The Unexpected Traveller

  2. The girlfriend says:

    You poor thing…..

  3. Amanda says:

    I suppose more to the point is how did it taste? Of course I’m from the US so I’m already upside down on the subject of tea.

  4. tenakalaz says:

    not real tea though is it…. ?
    Not exactly the tips of the broken orange peacock that we all love!
    I see the Gramma police found you though! Hide, I won’t tell them where you are! ;P

  5. Invader Stu says:

    The Unexpected Traveller – Well this is most indecent of me and it has been corrected. Please do not tell the queen. The punishment for such a thing is to be beheaded.

    The girlfriend – I’m glad you understand.

    Amanda – Dare I say it… it was good. Confound it all!

    Tenakalaz – If grammar police read any farther I might be on the lame for some time.

  6. Aledys Ver says:

    Sacrilege!!!! :o) I don’t know if I’m more surprised at the new contraption or at reading that you actually liked it … I thought you were going to say you hated it! :o)

  7. Invader Stu says:

    Aledys Ver – I was honestily torn. could I say tea was bad? No matter how it was made?

  8. Anneke says:

    This is going back to the tea egg. (supposedly better tasting than paper bags) So I don’t know what you’re on about. Surely, as a true British gentleman you must find it comforting, taking you back to old times…?

  9. Invader Stu says:

    Anneke – Yeah… Well… I have one thing to say to that… er… Look! A three headed monkey! *quickly runs away*

  10. zed says:

    One does not drink afternoon tea in one’s establishment out of a paper straw. It has come to one that that is how one’s grandson’s inhales talcum powder of a sort. One insists that the guillotine should be brought back as swiftly as possible.

  11. Gez says:

    Heh. I’ve seen these before – mainly from putting them in kerstpakketten from when I was working on the run-up to Christmas. A couple of packs ended up in our own kerstpakketten. I gotta say though, they don’t quite brew as strong as I’d like em to. Still, at least it’s better than instant tea. Like instant koffie, it’s just not quite right.

  12. Invader Stu says:

    Zed – At once your majesty.

    Gez – Instant tea (and koffie) is the work of the devil.

  13. Ash says:

    I’m sure it’s not quite right at all! Dutch tea is just horrible in any case, and they don’t even put milk in it. English tea is the only real tea, preferably Yorkshire tea, but that’s because I grew up in the tropics where the tea is really strong.

  14. Alison says:

    My Scottish mother had two failings in raising me: I can’t roll my Rs and I just haven’t developed a taste for tea.

    That said, even I find the concept of instant tea and these T-Sticks to be wrong on many levels.

  15. The girlfriend says:

    Dutch tea horrible??? Haha… I didn’t know there is such a thing called “Dutch tea” ? Ever heard of “Dutch breakfast tea”? And the Dutch actually do drink English tea…only not in an English way…but in a much purer form! I drank tea the English way when i was a kid… glad those days are over ;P

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