Monday, May 17, 2010

Tea Time

While crossing the street here in London is still a dangerous proposition for this fast walking New Yorker who’s still looking left for traffic coming from the right, the ubiquitousness of tea almost makes up for the life size game of frogger I must play every time I take a step off the side walk.

It’s quite liberating to be in a country where you can literally have tea in any drinking situation. No cackles from the peanut gallery when I straddle up to a bar and ask for hot tea. No dear in the headlights look from the pubescent headphone wearing sandwich maker at Subway when I ask for Earl Grey with my value meal. This must be what Harry Potter felt like when he first stepped foot into Diagon Alley, “Finally, I’m normal”. Even the construction workers here drink tea, PG Tips. It’s their house blend but in the states PG Tips is some gourmet ish.*

Somehow tea is not considered manly but England conquered the whole world sipping tea with their pinkies out. I think we need 50 Cent to sip on Earl Grey in his next video. Maybe come out with his own brand of tea. Ja ja ja Darjeeling!!

England is the country that basically spawned us. When did we give up the tea drinking? Perhaps we lost the taste for it that cold day back on December 16th 1773 when we dumped all the British tea into the Boston Harbor. Great day for America but a bad day for tea and some 200 years later, for me as well.

And to make matters way worse, a new band of crazies with twisted facts and misinformation are running around associating themselves to my favorite aromatic hot water infusion. The nerve!

*ish - slang for Sugar Honey Ice Tea

1 comment:

me! said...

Can't give you Fiddy with Earl Grey, but this is a pretty good substitute:

Tea Time