Ding Dong, Something’s Dead

Isn’t that title a mistake? Any tea blog with above title is going to be about Dong Ding, the Taiwanese oolong, right?

Wrong.

As a keen history buff, I often take the long view. My favorite bits to look at are all a few thousand years past, though I do have an interest in  politics as well. I’m nearing 50 years old, which means that there is now some history that I was around for.

In the late 1970s/early 1980s I was a musical omnivore, playing in a variety of bands that covered everything from 60s rock and heavy metal to punk and new wave, all of which seemed to signify that young people could change the world.

In Australia, we had the infamous razor gang, set up by the Fraser government to slash government expenditure, and the economy was not great.

Across the world though, we could see that the two towering political figures of the day, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher,  were exciting real passions. Not the Australian kind, which I think hit its zenith when someone threw an egg at our Prime Minster’s car, but the more disturbing kind, involving shooting at politicians, or that perennial favourite, smashing and burning things, adding some looting on the side and then pretending that it was some sort of political protest.

From our comfy Australian sidelines, we could see that Ronnie was, of course, a bit of a joke. It was like the plot of a film starring some old, hammy actor, except it was the government of the world’s biggest superpower starring some old, hammy actor.

But Thatcher’s Britain was a different story. Many of our British cousins were hurting, and the Thatcher Government was engaged in a pitched battle with unions. Legions of writers, musicians, actors painters and especially comedians were born in that environment.

Both Governments believed that by supporting the rich they could help the poor, and like most simple economic ideas, that’s great on paper, but not when you are living in a cardboard box under a bridge.

Many people seem to think it’s black and white. You’re either anti-Thatcher, or a fascist.  I had a conversation once with a man who recounted what an appalling government that was. He’d been a union man all his life, and he thought it the worst government ever, led by the worst person ever. We had that conversation seated in his comfortable living room in a house he’d originally rented from the local council but been able to buy, thanks to Thatcher government legislation.

That’s legislation that changed the lives and the prosperity of millions of Britons. Less remembered that the infamous Poll Tax. More significant.

We tend to judge all governments harshly at the time, and hindsight usually adds some balance.

Not so the anti-Thatcher lobby, which has wildly celebrated her passing this week. In addition, a concerted campaign has seen the download charts topped by the 1939 hit “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead” ironically from a time when there were a couple of governments round that made the Thatcher Cabinet look like Quakers.

I’d like to tie this in to an interesting fact: the 1970s is when teabags took off in Britain.

Sure there’s some great things to love about Britain in the 1970s, such as the first seven Queen albums and Fawlty Towers, but it seems to me that it’s also a time that politeness and manners got the wrong end of the stick.

Whilst I’m not one for snobbery or suppression of passion, I think that this was time when sheer bad manners held sway at times. The world in general, and Britain in particular changed a great deal.

Promoting ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead’ is never going to erase the fact that hurling a brick through an innocent shopkeeper’s window, throwing a rock at a policeman or torching a car was wrong, and blaming one person – and your duly elected representative at that – is no less silly than blaming the whole thing on the rising popularity of tea bags.

So, if you were one of those who took part, or even approved from the sidelines, then you can stop larking about with Judy Garland musicals and just admit you were out of line then, instead of being even more out of line now.

You can’t change the past, but you can change back to loose leaf tea. Please.

See, it cost me nothing to be polite.

Tea is inextricably intertwined with politeness and gentility in some minds. And in some funky modern tea shops, there’s an aura of rudeness that seeks to supplant it; a kind of “look how cool we are” rudeness that turns up in places like Teasmith in London’s Spitalfields market as I whined about a while ago.

It’s a little thing, but on the whole, politeness is essential. Even for someone like me, who celebrates rudeness and sarcasm. Even more so, for if I was rude and sarcastic all the time, how would anyone know when I was seriously agitated?

So, let’s take our beverage seriously for the polite bastion of society it is. Coffee is raucous and wears out its welcome like a visiting child with ADHD; hot chocolate is a little slutty, alcoholic drinks are the BFF you think you can’t live without until you decide you’d like to, and water is the liquid equivalent eating paper. Tea is the clearly the choice of champions, and polite champions at that.

Whether you own a tea shop or just visit one, insist on politeness. Insist on loose leaf. As I have categorically shown, when you start being impolite as a matter of course, and using teabags, then society around you will collapse and bricks will start flying through your window.

Too late to jump politely onto  the loose leaf bandwagon then.

Something will be dead, and it won’t be a witch.