I think that sometimes, we have to not just come out of the closet, but burn the closet door.
I’ve never been dishonest about my preferences, or the fact that I like to experiment. I mean, most people experiment a bit, maybe in their youth, at college or university or whatever. But then they settle down into the mainstream.
Not so for me.
Of course, when you’ve been described as a megastar of tea blogging (admittedly by myself) then people expect you to operate under a different set of rules. A lessening of conventions. A certain forgiveness of peccadilloes. “Harmless dabbling? Well, he’s an artiste. You have to expect it.”
And it must be said, I’ve never really thrown the fact I swing both ways in people’s faces.
But now, I have to set the record straight.
I, Robert Godden, AKA the Devotea am bi-beverage. I regularly drink coffee.
Perhaps ‘regularly’ is a bit strong. Whilst I’ve had eighteen cups in the last two days, it’s usually one or two a week. Compared to my 12 cups of tea per day, my tea blogging, my tea videos etc, it’s hardly worth a mention.
Except that I have been leading a second life. (Or perhaps it’s a third or fourth, one tends to lose count.)
I could suggest to you that the person in this video here is someone who has copied my act, and my face. But no, it is me.
Yep. I make coffee videos. I blend and sell coffee. I blog on coffee. @jazzycoffee of CoffeeJazz is, in fact, me.
Not only that, I take my coffee almost as seriously as my tea. Everyone knows my feelings about tea bags, so it won’t surprise you to know I have not drunk instant coffee since 1981 – High School chemistry lesson where I found out how they made it. Shameful stuff.
So, I hope this revelation will not cause my friends around the globe to throw up their hands in horror, burn effigies of me in the street, have huge bonfires of First Class Chai or simply sob quietly into their 2010 Giddephar Musks.
I do consider that there is a certain hypocrisy in people who drink beer and tea, or wine and tea (not together, although don’t let me stop you) but then decry the coffee drinker.
I will never turn my back on my first love, tea**. But coffee has its place, as an exciting mistress for occasional good times.
I demand the same high standards of both, and I’m as appalled at the lukewarm, bitter revolting coffee as I am by the ham-fisted oversteeped pot.
The sentence marked ** will self destruct if Mrs Devotea ever reads it. It is a dramatic device, not a statement of fact.
“I, Robert Godden, AKA the Devotea am bi-beverage. I regularly drink coffee.”
What should we do with you?
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Nothing at all 😀
You are the way you are and this is why we read you and like what we read.
Keep on being you.
I don’t know if you need to be worried about this sudden silence to your blog post. I will have to ask around. Perhaps the shock still runs deep and many find themselves quite unable to reply 😛
As to me; I accept you the way you are my dear friend. But if you drink that much coffee, and that much tea every day, do you ever leave the bathroom for long? I expect you end up writing a lot of your articles on the bog.
Oh, one more thing. You said your sentence about tea being your first love will self destruct, if it is read by wifely eyes, but what about the one about the mistress? That quite okay with the missus? Better apply “self destruct” to that one too ha ha.
Interesting blog post once again, thanks for keeping us so entertained. Whatever next? I’m waiting.
J.
@jackie: perhaps self destruct should apply to the entire post 😛 but this would mean that we are fanatics, which we are not: we like tea, perhaps love it but we are tolerant with the poor coffee drinkers that are lost among us 😛