I had a bad cup of tea on a plane yesterday; the same venue offered that abomination against nature known as “creamer” to Lady Devotea as they offered no milk, and later at an airport, an offshoot one of the “worlds best retailers” – Harrods – served us up teapots containing teab*gs. So, what you […]
There’s a thing in Australia called the Cultural Cringe, and if you’ve not heard about it, it’s kind of a national chip on our shoulder; an inbuilt inferiority complex when compared to selected foreign cultures. It manifests in many ways, from TV programming to architecture to education. It even has it’s own Wikipedia page, so […]
ACT 1: IN WHICH ONE RESPONDS TO SOGGY DESPERATION In one long dark teatime of the soul*, I stared into the abyss, pondered the hell hole that was my surroundings, and wondered at the inhumanity of it all. Yes, I was in Melbourne Airport. In late February, 2008 I blogged about a trip interstate. At […]
In the last month or so, Lady Devotea and I have once again introduced a device to our household that has been absent for a couple of decades: a record player. That’s right, we are listening to vinyl again. We’ve busted out our collection, which consists of stuff we owned prior to meeting, plus stuff […]
Whether one is designing and building a new mansion, retiring to a caravan**, renovating, downsizing, evicting your adult children or moving into a yurt, a pivotal question is: “how much of my space needs to be reserved for tea?” Now, I’m not talking about preparing tea. As long as your kitchen has sufficient power points to plug […]
I’ve pinched the title of today’s blog from a favourite David Bowie track. But only the title – the festival we attended yesterday wasn’t free. Not in money terms, although it was free from many of the things in Mr Bowie’s song, such as flocks of hippies and rampant LSD use, but then it’s not the […]
Well, folks, the week has been a bit chaotic. I’ve (a) not been well, and (b) swamped with each and every kind of work I do and (c) Lady Devotea has been flat out as well. The Friday night climax of that busy week was that we won tickets to the opening night of the […]
Today, I break my self imposed rule against not reviewing teas that are available in markets where they compete with our own, using Douglas Adam’s escape clause in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, where writers for the Guide may not, under any circumstances, offer a review that is against editorial policy “unless they really, really want […]
A weekend in Sydney is often fun, particularly if you mix business with pleasure. And in the tea business, business IS pleasure. We flew to Sydney last week to catch up with our friend Julia. At World Tea Expo 2013, we met Julia, and it’s fair to say that Lady Devotea and Julia hit it […]
I read a lot, when I can. And I often read fiction. And I often read non-fiction. And often, that’s history. When it comes to history, generally, I like Stone Age through to about 1799. Why 1799? Well I was born in 1965, so anything that starts with a 19 or even an 18 just […]