Getting My Own House In Order

Ah yes, our words can come back to haunt us.

In my last post, I mentioned that my next post – which should logically be this one – might be a little controversial and upset a few folk.

Not much of a surprise there, really: if I’m not being incredibly funny I usually am offending someone, and I try my best to do both simultaneously.

But I digress.

This is not the post I was intending to write. That’s probably next. If the last one was the preamble, let’s see this one as the post-preamble furtheramble.

The fact I released a book yesterday added a further pressure to write another post, but I covered that by sticking it on The Devotea’s News Feed.

So, after a digression and a further digression, we’ll begin.

Good.

Are you seated comfortably? Do you have some tea? Perhaps a nice china cup? I’m sure no-one wants to admit they are drinking a spectacular First Flush Darjeeling out of a chipped “World’s Greatest Dad” mug.

People who don’t drink tea see snobbishness in all aspects of tea.  “What, you have to measure the tea, add hot water using a device made for the purpose, end up with the liquid in the cup and the leftover solids in the bin? Whoa, man, that so totally different to coffee”.

Idiots.

But there is a certain cachet about the whole process.  A teapot from K-Mart is somehow not as good a tea-making contrivance as an 18th century heirloom Royal Albert that your great-grandmother owned (or your aunt bought at a thrift shop and lied about). Delicate china cups, silver sugar bowls with ornate tongs, they all enhance the experience.

And I must say right now, I love all that stuff.

But in order to love it, I think I need to acknowledge that such things were born of wealth and privilege and power. From a time when tea was kept in a locked caddy so the servants couldn’t drink it. From times whilst French aristocrats were sipping tea as their citizens boiled their shoe leather into soup out of desperation. When kings and queens dined on swans and a nice Young Hyson whilst poor mothers buried their children.

If a Victorian* servant spilt some tea whilst serving and was dismissed from service, there was every chance they would starve to death or wind up in a workhouse, literally working themselves to death in exchange for poor food and grim lodgings.

We can make up stories about Duchesses ‘inventing” afternoon tea to add to the snob value. We can celebrate the exploits of pioneers – and we should – but not many of them were born into a family of coal miners or domestic servants.

In short, historically speaking, tea was for the haves, not the have-nots.

Now, things are different for many (although not all) of the people of the world. Tea is so readily available that it is the world’s most popular beverage. It brings work to many very poor people – not always in the best of conditions – and sustenance to many more.

I’m writing this whilst sipping Fleurs de Provence from 600ml mug covered in cartoon dragonflies, but I do have about 100 china cups at my disposal.

‘Civilisation’ is a thin veneer sometimes, and we should not forget that sometimes it’s a veneer over some very uncivilsed situations.

I love the English Tea tradition. That’s where my true tea heart is. But love is not blind in this case, and I think that acknowledging the uncomfortable is part of truly understanding where the traditions I love were born.

*This refers to the Victorian Era in England, not the Australian State of Victoria. With a few exceptions, Australian Victorians drink tepid coffee and this causes their inability to pronounce the letter ‘a’.