Whilst My Tea Gently Steeps
The Calming Culture of Tea
If I could ever have a proverb tethered to my name centuries after I die, I’d want it to be this:
“If you want to get shit done, drink coffee. If you want to get shit done well, drink tea.”
Tea is a staple ingredient in our house. Through the fog and haze of my morning stupor, I’ll often reach for the kettle long before I put my glasses on. The cups from my many evening brews litter my bedroom like little white corpses on the battlefield. Sure, I may forget to purchase toilet paper until the critical eleventh hour, and I keep forgetting to replace the empty shampoo bottles that decorate the bottom of the shower, but there is always tea. And what a variety. Earl Grey, Irish Breakfast, the classic Bushells teabag, French Earl Grey and Green Tea, for the philistine guests who occasionally visit the house and can’t stomach the dark leaves hailing from the foothills of Darjeeling. Tea is the crux of our existence. And this is a good thing, historically.
Whilst the Italians spent centuries running about fuelled by espresso engineering fast sports cars and building grandiose buildings dedicated to their randy gods, the British kept calm and carried on, quietly conquering the furthermost corners of the globe and building what has gone on to be the greatest empire known to man. And this could not have been achieved if not for the soothing ritual that is brewing and consuming a cup of tea. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 only compounds this theory. What became the catalyst for the American Revolution and the birth of an independent United States of America, the political protest and destruction of some perfectly good tea leaves shunned the traditions and gave a two fingered repost to the rule of the British. As they hurled those crates into the harbour, so did they do away with a critical ingredient for intelligent, calm and concise thinking. America went on to bombard their way through numerous world wars and even a couple that they weren’t actually involved in, whereas their Red Coat counterparts kept their heads down and a steady hand on the helm of reality, and if this is the direct consequence of tea consumption, I’d best put the kettle on.
As a university student, there is nothing more appropriate than an espresso brewed as dark and as bitter as my ex boyfriend’s heart to allow me to morph into an assignment writing machine, with the ability to spew forth absolute rubbish in a credible manner. But as a writer and creative, tea steadies the hand and calms the soul. It consolidates my thoughts and opinions, and the ritual of assembling the relative tea paraphernalia, boiling the kettle, gathering the silver spoons and steeping the tea is the perfect solution for writers block.
I love tea. And there’s nothing that says love more than a steaming mug of Earl Grey delivered unto me, unannounced, brewed to perfection by someone I love. Tea unites humanity, but on a smaller scale, it unites my housemate and I, my mother whenever I pop down for a visit, and it unites pen and paper. It’s not empirical domination, but it’s good enough for me.
