Spin the Teapot

Last year, one of my most popular posts was Tea Roulette, where I just blathered on about random subjects. Thankfully, I’ve created a stunt to get away with that again.

I have a bunch of idea that never made it to their own blog post, and I”ve arranged them on post-it notes in a circle. I shall now spin a small (empty) teapot, see where it points and then have five minutes to flesh that idea out.

A quick sip of Peppermint Plus,  a spin and we’re away:

On the last episode of A Gifted Man that I saw, the hero Dr Michael Holt was talking to a woman who repeated a story word-for-word. He immediately had her hooked up to the world’s most expensive diagnostic machines, probing her brain.

Yet in real life, at last Saturday’s market, a woman who I think might have been a stroke victim repeated something twice, and no-one popped up to help.

With some recent personal health issues that I struggled to get to the bottom of, it’s hard not to compare real life – where you sit in a crowded waiting room for hours only to be dismissed by an uninterested doctor who seems on the point of passing out themselves – to the small screen, where Holt, or House, or others of their ilk just seem to appear when needed and make a few wrong guesses before working it out in the end.

My answer, of course, is to drink tea, which cures 22,000 ailments, according to some mythical Chinese herbalist. And that guy is at least as real as a TV doctor.

Another sip, Another spin.

In the twelfth and thirteenth century in England, and probably in other places too, they used to have a justice system which regularly hoisted the accused into a pit of water that had been blessed. If you were guilty, then God saw to it that you floated, because the water rejected you. Then you were often put to death. If you sank like a stone, the good news is you’re innocent. Most likely drowned, but at least your family can take comfort from your innocence.

However, if you were a priest, you got special treatment – an idea that survives to this day in some places – and you could elect instead for “trial by morsel”.

If you were a priest and someone accused you of something naughty, you were made to eat some cheese. That’s it.

I hear you ask: “What the…”

Here’s how it worked: If the priest was guilty, they ate the cheese and the archangel Gabriel would make them choke on it. As long as they managed to eat the cheese without choking, they were safe.

Given the regular famines of that time, priests probably committed crimes just to get first crack at the dairy platter.

For me, if I’m ever accused of anything, I”m going to demand “Trail by Tea”. Put a litre of Sikkim Temi in front of me, and if I can drink it, perhaps with some nice shortbread biscuits, then the angels are on my side. “Not guilty, your honour.”

Big slurp. Big Spin.

How do you talk about tea in public? I have a couple of loose invitations to talk at tea shops on a “if you’re in town” basis.

But I suspect I’d disappoint people if I turned up and started talking about the cultivation of tea in the Wuyi mountains, or the level of oxidation in a Tie Guan Yin. I suspect I’d even bore myself.

So I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about putting together a “Devotea Live” experience that includes setting fire to stuff and blowing things up. But not just that, doing some fun stuff with tea.

I shall keep thinking. And possibly not ever mention this to the tea shops in question. I shall just obliquely ask about their fire insurance.

My tea cup’s empty. My teapot will not spin again today.

And the other post-it notes will have to wait another day.