Burning Down The {TEA} House

By Robert Godden

I have a score to settle.

Yesterday, I went for walk down The Parade with Lady Devotea. As previously mentioned, that’s a street here in Adelaide. About 40 minutes away from our house.

On this occasion it was the Food and Wine Fair.

It was very hot – well very hot-ish – and we walked the length and breadth, poking into little homewares shops and and peering at stuff, avoiding the overdressed and drunk, which was most of the people there.

It was one of those occasions where various scantily-clad lasses checked out the bulge in eligible young gentleman’s pants. The one their wallet makes, of course.

Anyway, we wandered and looked.

Firstly, I didn’t partake in any of the food.

It was a combination of crowds, the sad looking mess that happens when quality restaurants drag a barbecue out the front of their premises and serve their meals on biodegradable plates, and most importantly, the mint-topped hedgehog slice I really wanted being equivalent to a whole weeks’ worth of food on my diet.

So, no food.

Also, no wine, because I don’t drink, and Lady Devotea didn’t wish to partake of any wine either.

You might reasonably ask why I might go to a Food and Wine event and not have any food or wine. Go on, ask, we’ve got time.

Tea, of Course.

I checked on-line beforehand, and there was a place called Argo On The Parade offering “Artisan Whole Leaf Tea”.

So after an hour’s hard walking – well, easy strolling, but we were very hot – we found ourselves at this place.

Lady Devotea ordered a smoothie with banana and mango and yoghurt and milk – I think sugar might have played a part.

And I feasted my eyes on rows of tea tins. About 30 maybe.

What to choose?

I asked the young lady who was serving me whether they could ice me one of their teas, and was very happy to hear they could. I asked for the Jasmine Silver Needle.

‘No’,  she said. “I think we’ve run out.”

She took down the tin and it was indeed empty. Helpfully, she collected the other white teas from the shelf. I asked to see the back of the “ginger and peach” to check that I wasn’t going to have any allergy problems.

Ah, no ingredients list upon the tin. Best pop the top and look inside.

OH MY GOD! WHAT MANNER OF BASTARDRY IS THIS?

ARRRGGHHHHHHHH! TEA BAGS.

TEA BAGS! TEA BAGS! THE LET”S CALL THEM SILK THOUGH THEY”RE NOT LET”S CALL THEM PYRAMID-SHAPED THOUGH THEY ARE NOT LETS CALL IT WHOLE LEAF THOUGH IT BLOODY CLEARLY BLOODY WELL ISN’T” KIND OF  TEA BAGS.

I think I nearly fainted.

And then, I did something horrific. Soemthing so vile that I can’t believe it. I’m sickened still.

I said “Oh well, that will have to do”.

By the time I got back to my seat I regretted it, but what was I to do? I was very dehydrated and very much in need of any liquid.

What turned up was amazing.

Amazingly bad.

For starters, they’d basically steeped the TEA BAG for too long, filled the glass with ice and there you go, sunshine!

Any moron would have thought that through and used two of the wretched vile TEA BAGS for a shorter time.

I drank it, muttering darkly. It was truly vile. Almost hard to keep down. When I got the ice cubes, the Adelaide Tap Water flavour was actually more pleasant. And we have the worst water for many a mile.

I then checked the docket, and found I”d been charged $6.40. $6.40, you have to be kidding. They would have made a large latte full of milk for less than that, and here it was, water, ice and shitty TEA BAG, for $6.40.

Bastards.

During a tea forum this morning, I asked the group if they though burning the place down was too extreme a reaction, and apparently, it is. SOME people think this sort of thing does not quite deserve arson.

So, I have allowed my rage to burn in another direction.

From now on, when I find a place like this – a place that tell lies about its quality by using deceptive terms like “WHOLE LEAF”, I shall award a new rating, based on how bad it is, and how much it deserves to be burned to the ground.

I award Argo On The Parade  Four Petrol Cans out of Five On the Devotea Scale for Arsonistic Deservability.

Posted in Tea Retail, Tea Stories on February 20, 2012 – 5:24 pm | Comments (6)

Bo-lay! Pu-Eh! YES! NO! MAYBE!

By Robert Godden

As I’m about to cover in a tea video on blending, I’ve never had a formal education in tea. I learnt by hanging  around tea types, owning a tea shop, and drinking gallons of the stuff weekly.

A while ago, the inestimable @lahikmajoe wrote about whether it is OK for tea geeks to not like white tea, and of course, it isn’t.

However, I find myself in a bit of a bind over Pu-Er. I am supposed to like it, after all.

The first time I tried it, it sucked.

It was a Pine Tea & Coffee loose Bo-lay. Allegedly a fine tea. I hated it.

Perhaps my taste had something to do with it. I”m an unashamed sub-continental tea drinker, and a black drinker to boot. I’d rather drink a Mokalbari Assam, straight up, than anything else. If I have a choice between a green and a Lapsang Souchong, I’ll pick the latter 99% of the time.

In fact. I don’t drink that much green. I really like whites – I have a Sow Mee thing going on right now -and there are greens I adore, but generally, I go either side of them to a light white or luscious rich black.

I have had a few goes with Pu-Er since that first time, with mixed results.

I think part of the problem is this:

(I”ll whisper this bit)

If you take most teas, boil your kettle, chuck the water on the leaves and wait a few minutes, you get a fair representation of that tea.

Yes, I can hear you screaming. “But my eastern-slope-grown Oingo-Boingo three-quarter fermented Emperor’s Donkey’s Golden Leg requires 67.5 seconds at 89.5 degrees Celsius in a pot made of clay from the Mongolian Steppes at 10pm on a night with a gibbous mood or it’s simply not right. And if it’s not stirred by a Kanka-Bono speaking virgin with a lisp, then you might as well have a tea bag.”

It’s that sort of thinking that lead to all sorts of silly ideas. I live for the day a wine-snob says “Well, I prefer this particular French Wine because the proximity of a forty-year-old nuclear reactor and an industrial park add delicate, gingery, industrial waste and plutonium-leakage mouth feel and a slight glow in the dark”.

So, back to Pu-Er. It seems that despite my best efforts, you really do have to follow the instructions. There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.

So, using my tea travel glass thingy I got from @maykingtea, I stuck some of the Toucha I bought for the Tea Salon Pu-Er hangout (that I accidentally drank a completely different tea at) and FOLLOWED THE INSTRUCTIONS.

It was surprisingly drinkable.

Great? NO! Life-changing? NO!

But to be fair, it was a $3 Toucha Cake from a chaotic Asian Grocer.

I think this journey has a way to go.

 

Posted in Tea Stories on February 19, 2012 – 7:11 am | Comments (10)

My Dodgy Valentine

By Robert Godden

Valentine’s Day has been and gone, and except for one thing, it went pretty smoothly, not counting the tent*.

The missing component was my Valentine’s Day Video. I’ll not be releasing one this year.

I shot it over three session and two days, it included three or four great dishes.

And then I sat down to edit it.

I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like the audio. I didn’t like the fact it was 17 minutes long. But mostly, I didn’t like the way I looked.

I’ve struggled with weight issues my whole life, and of recent times, it’s got out of hand. I’ve been on the right path for 5 weeks now and at least it’s going in the right direction. In addition, I been unwell and I looked like crap.

I LOVE VALENTINE’S DAY. I try to do something special each time, and this time around, rather than the usual plan (home cooked breakfast at one end of the day and dinner out at the other) I suggested a picnic supper to watch the sunset at one of our many splendid local beaches.

If you’re dieting, I find both the idea of settling for an inferior meal, or of saying “It’s a special occasion, pass the chocolate” to be cowardly.

The carefully selected picnic food went down a treat. I iced some 1001 Nights with a little honey, and Lady Devotea had chilled some champagne.

Here’s the food:

I made a salad from fennel, rocket, tomato, cucumber, red pepper and midnight beauty grapes. I created a zero-fat yoghurt dressing with tea salt, pepper, mint, garlic and tea seed oil added to the yoghurt.

I steamed some chicken tenderloins in Sow Mee tea and then cooled them, slicing them and adding them to the salad.

For dessert, I made a very low energy trifle. I made a jelly out of Ceylon Black Jasmine tea with mixed sugar and sweetener, added diced honeydew melon, added a layer of thinly sliced Weight Watchers Ginger Kisses cakes. The top layer was a Vietnamese

Jasmine custard with cherries.

So there we were, in a tent (I’ll get to that*) watching the sunset.

OK, so there were suddenly a bunch of storm clouds. It didn’t matter. We went a-strolling along the beach. We even saw this little fella:

All in all, a lovely Valentine’s Day.

Then we went back to the tent (almost there*) and packed up, and went home.

The first few raindrops falling as we left the beach.

*OK. We bought a pop-up tent. It popped up splendidly. I could not unpop it, despite spending ten minutes wrestling with it on the beach. As I write this, it is jammed in the back of Lady Devotea’s car, waiting for us to go to the tent shop and ask them to fold it.

Posted in Tea and Life on February 15, 2012 – 5:40 pm | Comments (5)

Charity begins at homelessness

By Robert Godden

A few years back, we ran a tea and coffee shop, and for the most part, the people who came into it were within the range of ‘extremely pleasant and well mannered’ down to a ‘trifle surly’.

Once a man came in, shouted that our range of gelati was not vegan - not that we’d ever claimed it was – and then left, still shouting. My only conclusion was that he was a professional vegan gelati agitator.

Other than that, not much. But there are exceptions.

I did have one customer turn violent and threatening. It was Saturday morning, and it was just me and one employee, Nick.

As well as being a Masters student in forensic chemistry and a comic fanboy, Nick was a great employee. He has since gone on to work as an analytic chemist for a company that mines uranium, and I believe it’s not the massive salary or love of working in the Outback that attracted him to the position, it’s the hope that a nuclear accident will transform him into a superhero.

An added bonus on this occasion was the fact that he is about 7 feet tall, about 5  feet across the shoulders and at the time was more or less dressed as the comic book hero “The Punisher”, as per the picture I’ve pasted in. Note that Nick was carrying a spoon and milk jug as opposed to a pair of massive pistols, but everything else was similar.

A customer came in. It was his third visit, and the first two hadn’t gone well.
The customer in question was most definitely NOT a tea drinker. He had requested a Yergecheffe, and was quite upset that we did not have any. Neither of the other two Ethiopian coffees appealed,or any others from our range of 46 coffees, which I think most would agree, is a lot of choice. Reluctantly, he agreed to our Velvet Kilimanjaro” blend.

What actually sent him over the top was my insistence that he have the coffee to take away, and, well, take it away. We were the only café in the area that would actually serve homeless people, but this guy’s personal hygiene was at an all-time low. He also used to sit there muttering into his coffee and staring at other customers; in a not dissimilar way to “Castleton” in the Tea Writer’s Collective’s story The Tea Rooms

Pretty sad really. The guy obviously had mental issues.

When he threatened me, Nick moved out from behind the counter, and our customer-not-to-be decided to decamp, spitting wildly but seemingly without saliva.

A few moments later I stuck my head out of the door. He was 100 metres up the road. He saw me, started screaming and running towards us.

We did have to call the police – and bear in mind, we were 15 metres from SA Police Headquarters and 50 metres from the Adelaide Police Station. The guy ran past more or less without stopping and twenty minutes later the police arrived.

The two who turned up were on pushbikes and wearing shorts. I wanted to ask them if their parents knew where they were, or if the male one had started shaving yet. They both looked like they wanted to run in same direction as our (ex) customer; not so much to catch him but because they were scared of “The Punisher”.

The whole incident left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

A year before we’d bought the shop, I’d heard a woman on the radio. She’d been approached on Norwood Parade (that’s a street, not an event) by a homeless man to “lend her $3.75 for a semi-skim latte” and she’d taken the novel approach of saying. “I was going to get myself a coffee anyway, let’s have one together, I’m buying”.

She left him sitting at an outside table. When she returned a few minutes later with two lukewarm and bitter coffees (justified editorial comment, I’ve always thought that place had rubbish coffee) the owner was just ejecting her erstwhile sipping companion. He told her that homeless people disturbed his other customers.

I always promised myself I would not take the same tack. With the shoe on the other foot, I was forced to consider all of our customers collectively, not just one.

It was the time of the financial meltdown. A few days earlier, I’d heard a radio report from the US that included audio of people being ejected from their houses with nowhere to go. I’d actually run my car off the road after being so affected by it. They were dark times for many people.

When we bought the shop, it had 2,660 teabags in it. I refused to have them there, and I donated 1,330 of them to a local homeless shelter. I guess I felt good that some homeless guys could have a Taylors of Harrogate Assam or Lapsang Souchong bag, or a Pickwick Earl Grey, instead of supermarket home brand stuff.

I still think about Yergecheffe Man vs The Punisher. I think I could have handled it better. It also could have ended up worse.

After Yergechaffe Man ran past our window, I never saw him again.

Posted in Tea and Life, Tea Retail, Tea Stories on February 5, 2012 – 8:18 am | Comments (3)

We can all try a little bit harder…

By Robert Godden

I agree with @lahikmajoe, (otherwise known as Ken in that mystical arena called Real Life that I have only a passing connection to).

But then again, I don’t.

You see, Ken took the opportunity to advise someone who was in a  supermarket and contemplating a virginal tea purchase. He asked a few questions about how that person took their coffee, and then Voila! One recommendation sorted.

Now I’m not suggesting that Ken did anything wrong in this. I would have asked a few more telling questions: “Do you prefer a mild Maragogype bean or are you more into a nutty Limu?” “Do you add an extra shot in a medium cappuccino?” “Do you like a nice mocha?” And my favourite: “In a latte, can you tell the difference between full cream and skim milk”.

There’s every chance of course, that the poor guy would have given up, headed straight for the gin and spent the night in a gutter, babbling about A. Arrabica vs C. Robusta.

But I digress.

The fact is, most coffee drinkers have the palate of your average Nubian Goat. Some of them drink INSTANT COFFEE if you believe it, which is crime against humanity of the most vulgar kind. Some add milk and sugar to drip filter coffee, which makes some form of runny dessert, like a custard that doesn’t have the decency to thicken. And many of them take a good espresso and bury it under terms like “weak”.

When we ran a tea and coffee emporium, we had 46 coffees, including some spectacular blends. But if you compare our mildest Maragogype to our strongest blend Mañana , or even our double roasted Costa Rican that came with a warning, it was still coffee. It tasted like coffee. Sure there was subtlety; there was nuttiness or not, astringency or mellowness, but it all tasted like coffee.

Whereas the range of flavours in tea is so much wider. There is so many more aspects to choose from.

So Ken’s interrogation technique doesn’t hold up. “Do you prefer the jasmine taste of your grande bollocky supremo latte to be at the forefront, or further back on the palate?” is going to be met with a blank stare.

I prefer a much more direct link to the brain. You only need two questions: “What do you normally drink?” and the big one “How do you feel right now?”

And the second one is the key.

We had a customer called Mary who would walk in twice a week. I’d say “How do you feel”, and she’d normally say one word a or a short sentence, and I’d match the tea to her mood.

One day she said “Whimsical” . I  mixed our mango and quince teas together, and added some cornflowers on that occasion.

Another time she replied “Suffering from a melancholic lassitude”".  I applied a Wild Cherry Sencha to ameliorate that condition.

I think my favourite was the time she said “Uncharitably disposed toward the rest of humanity”.

On that occasion, I gave her some Sikkim Temi. I only had four kilos left, so I’d withdrawn it from sale and taken it home to drink myself. But I kept a bag under the counter for emergencies like these.

So go on. Ask the question. Someone’s popped ’round for tea? Brew them something to suit their mood. So what if you have to make four brews for four people?

Tea is that versatile.

I’m feeling EXUBERANT! Time to brew a pot of…

Posted in Tea and Food, Tea and Life on February 1, 2012 – 11:17 pm | Comments (17)

It’s Time

By Robert Godden

Today, on Australia Day, I launch the first of my new global tea sales sites, hosted by Tea Trade.

This site which ships from an Australian distribution Centre will be followed by two others as soon as possible, and perhaps more. Certainly I intend to have the US up by April and the UK up by June.

I’ve been thinking about how to launch these sites, and I came up with the (mad) idea of re-enacting famous pieces of political oratory. l’ve always been fascinated with orators from Cicero onwards, so decided impudently to have a crack myself, changing words to meet my evil needs.

The launch ones for the UK and the USA are rather obvious*, but for Australia, I decided to just pinch a great slogan and an idea. and just get into it.

So, at this point you can just watch the video of me being silly, or read the rest below it and then watch it, or even don’t. But this is the ad that will go live shortly.

The history of “It’s Time” is that it was the catchphrase of a famous Australian election campaign that put an end to 23 years of conservative rule. Under the highly charismatic Gough Whitlam, the Australian Labor Party ran a slick campaign that was years ahead of its time. He repeatedly used the catchphase, made a famous speech in Bankstown, and then the ALP launched a series TV ads with a catchy “It’s Time” jingle, complete with entertainment stars singing along.

The campaign was a roaring success, and the ALP swept to power.

What happened next was extraordinary. Depending on which side of politics you sit on, you might think that Mr. Whitlam is quite simply the greatest buffoon ever elected to office, with a massive reform agenda but no ability, who led a disastrous government that was eventually sacked in a constitutional crisis. Or you can see Mr Whitlam as a better version of Saint George, slaying a dozen dragons at once whilst the evil and cruel opposition leader, Malcolm Fraser, tied his shoelaces together with the help of The Queen,. The Governor-General, MI6, MI5, the super top secret MI4½, ASIO, ABARE** , Edgar J Hoover and Chairman Mao.

I must declare I’m more in the first camp than the second, but there is no doubt Gough Whitlam is the funniest and most charismatic figure ever in Australian Politics.

Once asked where he wanted to be buried, he replied “It doesn’t matter, I’ll only be needing it for three days”.

My video is not an impersonation, but it is a nod to an amazing moment in politics; and it seem appropriate for me to be inspired by someone with as much hubris as myself.

*Churchill and Lincoln, obviously
**The Australian Bureau of Agricultural Research Economics***
*** No other commentator has ever linked them to this pivotal moment. It's a scoop!
Posted in Tea Retail on January 26, 2012 – 8:19 am | Comments (2)

Ah… Milly.

By Robert Godden

I have just learned that an on-line friend, @mildewpea has passed away; as a result of an accident.

When I was making my first few videos and engaging with the tea community, there was no-one more encouraging than Milly.

Milly was Tea Twitter family.

Her first ever tweet to me, I remember, was when she intercepted something I had sent to @thetearooms to scold me for using a fairly obvious euphemism. I thought she was serious – for about one tweet.

I had many conversations with her outside of the public timestream, and we exchanged some correspondence (actually our dogs did).When Wellington, Milly’s beloved dog was diagnosed with a terminal illness, I started #wellingtonwednesdays , and every Wednesday we all sent good thoughts.

If you ever wondered why Milly was not very active over the last year, her account was repeatedly attacked by a bunch of trolls, who seemed to be obsessed with Justin Beiber and upsetting Milly.  When those same trolls went after me, Milly stepped in and offered very useful advice.

I wish I’d spoken to her more of late. It’s been about 15 days since we last exchanged a pair of tweets, as I say, she has become slightly withdrawn from Twitter.

I’ve never met “Mr Pea”, but my thoughts are with him in this sad time.

Rest In Peace, the one and only @mildewpea.

I shall lift my cup to you now.

 

Posted in Tea and Life on January 24, 2012 – 4:32 pm | Comments (26)

Wish List: NYC

By Robert Godden

New York City has never been big on my wish list of places to go. I’ve always been sure I’d love it if I got there, but I don’t have the imperative like some people have. It’s a bit like Paris; I’m not that interested in going but if it crops up I might find myself there.

However, I wish I was going to be there this Friday, even though I actually can’t physically do that.

At a place called Harlem Flo, Jo (@AgiftofTea) will be guest speaking at a Cooking with Tea extravaganza.

I’d love to be there to support Jo. Though it’s sold out, so it looks like she has all the support she needs.

Actually, that’s a little disingenuous - I’d like to be there to support Jo AND to run amok.

Firstly I’d make sure that Erik Kennedy (@thetearooms) gets there, because it’s more fun being disruptive if there are others there who might join in. For that matter @AmazonV is reasonably nearby. New York –  look out!

Sadly, it’s not be  - this time.

But the great news we can take from all this – apart from cheering Jo on as she fights the good fight – is that these events ARE happening. Awareness is growing, and tea seems to be taking the US by storm.

So not just NYC, but that whole country is definitely creeping up my ‘to-do’ list.

In many ways, the US is the most encouraging market of all. @Peter of Tea Trade remarked the other day about it being easier to get a coffee drinker onto loose-leaf tea than a -hurrghh- tea-bag drinker, and as I continue to ponder, prod and puzzle over that nugget, I keep seeing the US as the idea study subject to prove that.

I’ll continue to ponder. Oh, and good luck, Jo.

 

Posted in Tea and Life, Tea Retail, Uncategorized on January 20, 2012 – 6:48 am | Comments (6)

It’s Utter Madness

By Robert Godden

I’m a week or so away from relaunching my on-line tea sales efforts, and it will be hosted solely here on Tea Trade.

I’m also putting together three video commercials that I think will be funny and make a point. One for the US, one for the UK, one for Australia. More on those on Launch Day.

I’ve been wrestling with my tag line and whilst it’s not perfect yet, I’m working along the lines of “I am  completely and utterly mad, and in a tea retailer, that’s a good thing.” I thought that was quite a unique selling proposition, as the 1980s marketing books say.

But a few hours  in front of the television has made me wonder exactly how unique madness is.

Last night I turned onto ABC to watch a show I’m enjoying called Video Killed The Radio Star, a series of interviews with the people who were in on the first days of using video to make music clips, which was a pivotal moment in popular music, and features many of the greats of the early 80′s. This of course, means Britain, as in was still about 1975 in the US in 1983, at least as far as music was concerned, and Australia was listening to US-style Aussie bands and pinching British style Kiwi-bands. But I digress.

The government-owned ABC2 shares a channel with ABC4Kids. So up until 7pm, it’s ABC4Kids, then at 7pm we get ABC2 and Video Killed The Radio Star. Are you with me so far?

So, in turning it on at 6:54, I got to see the last six minutes of children’s programming.

As we know, most children’s TV is rubbish, that treats kids like morons. Obviously there’s been thousands of great ones (two whole generations of Australian kids mispronounce their ‘z’ thanks to Sesame Street, but otherwise, you’d have to say that’s got merit) and even more thousands of poor ones. The worst ones are always the ones where colourful characters who can only made some sort of chirping sound have inane adventures that combine the “moral guidance” of Thomas The Tank Engine with the mental might of a salamander and the intrinsic artistic ability of Jackson Pollock or one of my cats, whomever you think is worse (which is close run thing). They have all the sincerity of a Hall & Oates video.

I remember when our son Lucas was six, he caught three minutes of Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop, and turned to us and said “This is utterly uncalled-for”. I still laugh at that twenty years later.

So, I get five minutes of In The Night Garden. FIVE MINUTES??? Five minutes of inane British Children’s TV is a lot to handle. Incidentally, if you’re not aware, TV from the UK is divided into the best drama and comedy in the world, and the worst kids’ TV and reality TV.

But I’m in front of the damn thing now, plate on my lap, I’m not going anywhere.

We start with three creatures called Tombliboos. They seem to just wander around the set like misshapen pinball balls. At this point, they are about to go to bed, but the narrator, instead of heading off for cup of tea, insists that they are asking for a story. How he knows this is a mystery, because the only sound they make is like a latex glove with three mice in it being slid down a blackboard.

In the story – told by the narrator to the Tombliboos about the Tombliboos and accompanied by an animation – the Tombliboos – who are only distinguishable by the fact they wear different coloured but otherwise identical track suits with large spots on them – decide to go for a ride on some sort of public transport conveyance called -if memory serves -a ‘Ninky Nonk’.

We are led to believe that the ride itself was uneventful, but upon disembarking we discover they seem to have all swapped trousers!

Well, I imagine that has happened to all of us. You get on a bus, get off the other end and find you’ve accidentally swapped your suit pants for the jeggings of the 18-year-old lass next to you, resulting in her getting lost in the right leg and you passing out from lack of circulation.

But then – here’s the dramatic twist – they then alight another form of public transport – the ‘Pinky Ponk’ - and it happens again!

I didn’t see that coming.

By now I have two lines of thought. One, the obvious one, that these children’s characters are actually wild swingers when out of sight and the other is – am I sure being bonkers is actually unique?

Anyway, the show proceeds with every character being made to go to sleep. The last one, one “IcklePickle” appears to be hit with some sort of sleeping gas when he tries to avoid it.

Thankfully that’s over. I’m watching the credits and it appears the narrator is Derek Jacobi.

Derek Jacobi? Famed Shakespearean actor? Star of theatres across the the UK? The eponymous Brother Cadfael in the acclaimed TV series based on the books of Ellis Peters about the crime-solving monk? THAT Derek Jacobi?

It appears so. Why? It’s just more madness.

Next up we get a little one minute interlude called ‘Giggle and Hoot’, featuring a twenty-something in pyjamas with that condescending manner of young actors who truly believe that this gig will lead to a blockbuster movie role where they have a sex scene with Kate Blanchett and / or Russel Crowe, but in the meantime they are going to be so damn earnest that the kids will be rapt in their devotion to the matter at hand, which is “Going to Bed”.

Along with his sidekick, an animated owl, they have a little banter, say boo to each other in an attempt to add some drama, and then they launch into a song about how the sun has gone down, the stars are coming out, the owl has just gone onto guard duty, and all you little sods should be in bed.

Lets leave aside the fact that the only benefit of being guarded by an owl is if you believe you are being targeted by a mouse, and consider the facts.

The sun is going down? NO , IT”S NOT! The stars are coming out to play? THEY ARE NOT!! It’s seven o’clock in the middle of summer in Australia. There are two to three more hours of daylight! Kids are not that dumb.

More madness.

Then we were up to Video Killed the Radio Star and the interviewees were Bob Geldof and director David Mallett. I hardly need mention the madness inherent in that interview. At one point Mallet calls Geldof a “scumbag” for spouting fibs. All good stuff. The clip for Never In A Million Years is particularly mad or “complete bollocks” as Geldof helpfully explains.

Wow, glad the madness is over, it’s onto Grand Designs on ABC1. In this case, it’s an old cottage, where the new owners are going to build a reproduction mill-house near it, then link it via a steel and glass structure that looks like it comes from the set of Star Wars (if I can mention Star Wars without George Lucas demanding a royalty, let’s say Star Trek to be safe). Further more, he going to do most of the work himself, finish it in half the time it would take professional builders and at a third the cost.

Oh dear, it’s more madness, The guy is so far off the planet he could be a second moon. And yes, it takes him three times the budget and about five years.

So I have now concluded that yes, madness is great, but there’s a lot of it about.

I can happily sell my tea on the basis of being a bit mad.

And then Balibo came on. The story of how the world did nothing when Indonesia decided to invade East Timor in 1975, slaughtering men, women and children,  including the execution of six Australian journalists.

It’s clear now why being just a bit mad is a good thing.

So many people on this planet – many of those in positions of power – are completely mad.

Posted in Tea and Life on January 16, 2012 – 8:31 am | Comments (6)

Once more unto the breech

By Robert Godden

I’m writing this using up time that I should be using for other stuff.

And the “other stuff” is putting the final touches on my preparation for a small market stall I have once a month.

This time Lady Devotea will be swinging by later and joining me today will be Devotea Jr (regular readers will realise that that is our second son, as the eldest did not drink tea when I started blogging, and so was deemed to have abdicated).

This is a small market and will not be fiscally worthwhile. I anticipate over the four hours of the market - and about four hours prep – I”ll make about an hour or two’s worth of salary – and that’s not paying Devotea Jr, as he owes me some of his labour from an earlier project he failed to turn up to.

But I love the fact that dozens of people will be sampling my teas. It a brilliant form of instant feedback.

I also love the thrill of converting people from innocent passers-by to passionate supporters. We’ve only done this market once before and we have already had emails asking if we will be there again.

Last time, we had an astounding double act – I would fearlessly call out, cajole and implore people to try a sample. Then Lady Devotea would charm them and before you know it, tea in hand, they’d have moved from stranger to customer.

Even though we did the last market before Christmas, no-0ne was buying as a present – well, not for anyone else.

And I’m ready for “No thanks, I’m a coffee drinker.” I even managed to get some of those over the line last time.

This time, I’ve finagled a spot near the biscuit seller - time for a double act, I think.

So, I’m off to fight the good fight; teapots in hand; armoury of tea tales at the ready; it’s up the trench ladder and across the no-man’s land of tea apathy.

Onward we go.

Posted in Tea Retail on January 7, 2012 – 6:23 am | Comments (8)
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