Dear Alex,
I am continuing your very British last blog on the ‘Great British Bake-off’, and its future *chokes back sob*, with an equally British topic: the unassuming cup of tea.
Yesterday was the 358th anniversary of tea in the U.K, an event so important Google informed us of it.
I am stereotypically British in my love of tea. It is a trait that makes me incredibly proud and I have no idea why. Perhaps because there are only certain things that make me feel proud or patriotic to be British. The Olympics (I don’t know if you got the fact that I love the Olympics from my last blog, but just so you really know, I do), the national anthem, but most of all is when people use tea as a way to conquer any uneasy situation – boredom, sadness, anger, tiredness, unpredictable weather. Well, actually just weather in general.
Pinterest gets it.
The British can put the world to rights over a cup of tea and I strongly believe tea can conquer anything. At times of uncertainty the simple act of putting a tea bag in a cup, adding hot water and stirring, is a therapeutic enough task for me to gain perspective and calmness. It’s like magic – exclusive magic reserved just for hot beverages.
So this is why I was so upset when I found out last week that a company, with bold claims of innovation, has made tea…in a spray can.
Yum Cha Drinks’ new innovation ‘No More Tea Bags’, a useful invention for…I can’t think of who.
Now I know when the teabag came in all hell broke loose. I have a friend whose family still refuses to use a teabag, loose leaf all the way in their household. But they are distinct as far as I am concerned and amongst the general population, the teabag is THE way to make tea.
So was there even any kind of demand for this spray-can-tea madness? Were we ignorantly avoiding our tea-making destiny? I’m sceptical.
THEY claim that it says goodbye to the hassle of dirty, messy tea bags you have to throw away, not like any other form of household rubbish then. Please can someone make carrots in a can so I don’t have to peel them anymore and go through the hassle of putting the peelings in the bin? That would be foolish surely.
They also condescendingly note that it will result in:
“Properly brewed better tasting tea”.
This must be what happiness looks like.
Clearly they have no idea who they are dealing with. As if the British have ignorantly been drinking under brewed, bad tasting tea for decades. A realistic possibility, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not incensed by the madness of tea in a can. Now we know how infuriated the Italians felt when they found out you could buy tinned ravioli.
I’m all for progress, but this just seems unnecessary and expensive. With a starting price of £3.99 for 20 cups of tea, who can afford the sci-fi nonsense of tea in can when you can periodically buy 480 teabags for £5, from a supermarket that “makes it”.
Once upon a time we were a country who loved watching a programme where normal (and sometimes loveably slightly odd) people made cakes on a channel that epitomises being British. All with a cup of tea we made with a teabag.
Now who are we? I don’t know, but I hope to God we don’t become a nation of tea-sprayers.
Love T xx
TwentyWise 