Carly has been making cups of tea all her life. Ok then. This is an exaggeration. She never liked tea as a child and would always drink Horlicks, Ovaltine or hot chocolate and this involved heating milk up in a saucepan. And then there was coffee. But certainly, for all of her adult life she has been boiling kettles. Mostly to make tea for her then husband. She has worked out that she made him at least 365 x 35 cups of tea. He wasn’t really well disposed to getting up in the morning and Carly has been bouncing around from 05:00 most days. So, she makes him a cup of morning tea. Usually, one but often more than one during the day. So, this figure of 12,775 is actually likely to be an underestimate. That is a lot of tea, boiling of kettles, squiggling about the tea bag in the hot water, removing it, adding the right amount of milk and bringing it to him. Say 15 minutes per cup of tea = 191,265 minutes. This is a total of just over 19 days. Carly is pleased. This is her favourite prime number after seven. All that time never to get back. And even then, she still ended up being divorced. She could put in a claim. Probably best not. And for many years she had one of those nifty taps that provides instant boiling water. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Is this energy saving or wasting? Certainly, boiling a full kettle for one cup of tea is not saving. And it seems that making all this tea didn’t save her marriage in the end. She will just have to notch it up to experience.
She has noticed the trend for drinking just plain hot water. No. Even though Carly does drink herbal teas now she thinks that what with living in London with hard water, she doesn’t want to drink hot water that has a load of limescale in it. She would prefer to play pretend and have the taste of the hard water subsumed within the flavour of the herbs or flowers. Playing pretend is something we all do all the time. Well again. Here she goes. Exaggerating. We don’t play pretend all the time. We often just tend to ignore things that are difficult. Carly often does that to justify her insatiable appetite for going abroad. Mostly on aeroplanes. Are they the sole cause of the loss of the ozone layer and global warming? She was told it was the dairy industry. But she likes milk from cows and travelling. Oh dear. What a fix. Far more energy wasting than boiling the kettle.
Back to tea. When Carly moved into her current house, a new build, her mother gave her a travel kettle. That way she doesn’t need to stomp up and down three flights of stairs for a calming cup of tea. Carly tries to start off her day calmly. With fragrant tea lights, incense sticks and reading before yoga, as well as knitting to some podcasts. Carly’s son did insist on no noise before 07:00 or after 23:00. But Carly doesn’t need much sleep and she is up much earlier than 07:00. This isn’t to do with the light but her body clock. She always swipes left on those dating apps when she sees a potential date and is adamant that he needs to go out with a night owl. No, that would never work. Carly is in a bind. She needs to have an early cup of tea and has all the equipment upstairs in her bedroom, but she will need to walk about. Luckily the floors are wooden and if she puts on a pair of socks, she can glide across the floor like a ballerina. Carly smiles at this image. She knows that she is no more likely to be an elegant ballerina, than an elephant would be a skater at the local ice-rink.
But she now has her tea and that feels comforting. Really, she is addicted to coffee but the general feeling about tea and coffee is vastly different. Tea feels much more like a hug, a way of being without hurtling at full speed. Yes, being rather than doing. Coffee is more like being propelled forward. It gives you that buzz. She knows both regular tea and coffee contain caffeine, but she only drinks herbal or flower teas. So, no caffeine in them. Yes, tea for Carly feels like when she says “Just give it a rub” as compared “It is only an injection” which would be the coffee equivalent to how to manage a medical condition. They each have their place. But this is a story about tea. Carly has already written one about coffee.
And of course, tea has a wonderful history. And some lovely associated words like tisane. Oh yes, delights Carly – what a fabulous word. She thinks back to one holiday in India where all her family spent time in the hills. And watched tea pickers out for hours on the hillside putting the tips of the tea plants in their special satchels. They wore the most sumptuous and iridescent saris. She marveled at all those different colours – an entire rainbow on the mountainside.
Of course, making tea can feel like a ceremony. Especially in England if you have a pot. Firstly, you warm it, and then you make the tea and steep it. Lots of people collect teapots. But all of Carly’s seemed to have gone now. She would use one for mint tea. And if she did have a tea pot, she could put on a hand knitted tea cosy. But she doesn’t, so she can’t. She does love to knit but really cannot justify, however utilitarian a cosy would be, to knit one. And then she moves on to egg cosies. Again, if you do decide to eat a soft-boiled egg, then just eat it.
When thinking of tea, Carly is reminded of going out for tea. It is something her parents liked. Personally, she sees it as a bit of a silly meal. It is too soon after lunch and too near supper. But you can have beautiful cucumber sandwiches and fabulous cakes all served on delightful cake stands. She went once with her sister-in-law and her niece and her fiancé to have tea at Fortnum and Mason. It was charming and pleasant. But oh, so expensive. And really Carly needs to keep the calories down. But once you have paid an extraordinary amount for the tea you feel beholden to eat it all up. She supposes that if it were a tea dance, then more energy would be expended to offset the extra calories. “But people don’t do these anymore”, she thinks. What a shame. Carly quite likes dancing but not the sort of tea dances where it requires you to be mindful of where your feet are. Maybe she could institute a tea jog. Well at least a jog beforehand to negate the guilt.
Tea is also synonymous with being ill. It is like the English equivalent to eating chicken soup. If you have a sore throat what could be better than a mug of scalding honey and lemon. Better still with some whisky. Carly’s current favourite tea is lemon verbena. It comes from John’s allotment. And as Carly likes it weakly, she can reuse it several times. It ensures she is kept hydrated throughout the day. Carly is remiss with drinking water as it is so dull. She is grateful that John grows it and knows just how much to give her regularly to ensure her pee is pale rather than dark yellow. He really is helping her kidneys here.
Finally, Carly thinks about the difference between tea and chai. She thinks that maybe they are the same. Then she remembers the chai latte. For sure totally different. The latter is a drink which is heavy on the milk and sugar and has a few spices in it. She says to herself that she will have to look that up later when she returns to Wi-Fi connectivity. But for now, she will have to muse without instantaneous answers. That is an odd place to be now when all information is not only publicly available but whenever you want it. She has decided. She will sit with this disquiet of not knowing. Yes, it is good to still be able to tolerate this.
