My 12 Best Blog Post Titles What I Wrote*

The Devotea’s List Week. List 4.**

I love a great title.

I find inspiration in titles. Many of my favourite authors go for brilliant, somewhat far-out titles such as Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale”, “Flow my Tears, The Policeman Said” ).

Or the clever puns and references of Terry Pratchett. (“The Last Continent”, “The Fifth Elephant”, “Going Postal”).

And mostly, the greatest booktitleer of them all, Robert Rankin: “Raiders of The Lost Car Park”, “The Antipope”, “Sprout Mask Replica”, “Nostradamus Ate My Hamster” and the greatest book title ever: “The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of The Apocalypse”.

And so, when it comes to my own blog, I like to offer a great title to each post.

I’ve looked through all 209 on this blog and about 40 on some others, and decided to come up with my eleven best. Why eleven? The last list I did was Eleven Golden Permissions , and that was well regarded, so I figure eleven must be a charm. And then I couldn’t decide between two, so I made it an even dozen.

Here they are, as a countdown

12: Context and the Art of Slurping Your Own Tea This post covers one of my constant themes: the conflict between blogging about tea and being a seller of tea. The title is loosely based on the form of the book Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
11: We Might Have Started the Fire Obviously a nod to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, it talks about how people of all ages are doing their bit for the loose leaf tea revolution!
10: I Sent Scented Sencha to Santa The title is just alliterative, and the post talks about the difference between ‘flavoured’ and ‘scented’.

9. Creeping Like an Effing Squirrel. I read some rubbish that one Alexander Neckham had written about wine in the 1200s, and it sounded remarkably like the rubbish the wine folk still say now. So, over on Beasts of Brewdom, I had some fun with it, constructing a short dialogue between a waiter and a pretentious wine lover.
8: Friends, Romans, Countrymen: listen up you load of bludgers This is quite an odd post. The title comes about as I start by theorising that if Shakespeare had been early Australian, he would have written things differently (for example, “done to death by slanderous tongue” could have been “the big-mouthed arsehole got what was comin’ him” ), before eventually reviewing my friend Katrina’s book Tea Pages. And it’s possibly not a traditional review.

Not a bad list so far. Only mildly self-centred. But that’s unlikely to last.

7: “Arise, Sir Devotea.” Beep. Beep. Beeeep! This is about the premise that I should be knighted for services to tea, and why this will not happen. The title refers to a dream in which it does. I manage to throw bit of tea history into this happily- self-serving rant.

6. Bo-lay! Pu-Eh! YES! NO! MAYBE! : I find aged teas damn confusing. I even found the post confusing. The title is a reasonable reflection of this. The post is worth a read for the invented tea title (Oingo-Boingo three-quarter fermented Emperor’s Donkey’s Golden Leg) and its shot at wine drinkers.
5. Brown Owl and The Fortress of Evil . I was going for an Enid Blyton-like title here.The post itself is a gripping exposé of how a shameless organisation that is supposed to be helping children prepare for life teaches them to use teab*gs. It’s a scandal and I’m expecting a Pulitzer prize for this one.
4. My Kettle Just Heard From My Pot’s Lawyers This is a post in which I talk about opinions within tea, about how we all should perhaps be less opinionated. Of course, most people found this hysterical coming from me, which is why the title references an old cliche about hypocrisy.
3. My Own Private Finnvitka A blog about doing it your own way. The entire blog was inspired by the old Norse word “Finnvitka” and the title is pinched from the film “My Own Private Idaho”.
2. An Oglio Of Impertinence This is one of my favourite posts ever. It talks about coffeehouses in the 1600s, the Women’s Petition against Tea and Coffee, and the joys of connecting to other tea lovers on line. The title is a direct quote from contemporary sources about coffeehouses.

And finally, my favourite: I come to praise Tea, Sir, not to bury it . A pun on Shakespeare’s “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” and one I’m damn proud of! The post itself suggests that using teab*gs is clear evidence that cafés and restaurants don’t care, so you might as well go somewhere else.

*For those of you who didn’t get the title of this post, the “what I wrote” bit was a running gag by the pioneering English comedians Morecombe and Wise. Ernie Wise was portrayed as an egotistical, thwarted playwright who always used the phrase “A play what I wrote” . Quite fitting I think.

** This is List Four of “Lord Devotea’s List Week” a spectacular week of lists that will be spread over the Beasts of Brewdom and Lord Devotea’s Tea Spouts blog.