Lately, I have been increasingly concerned about Australia becoming the 52nd state of the US, language-wise. I read an Australian bestseller where the entire book, including the title, used the ugly American spelling of ‘jail’ for ‘gaol’. Why? Did they authors think Australians are so dumb and dyslexic that we might think her husband was […]
Pinching an idea from the world’s most popular tea blogger, Nicole Martin at teaformeplease.com , I am posting a short rundown on which of my 49 blog posts in 2016 were the most widely read. Reading these ten will make you incredibly smart, and very well informed, but sadly, mostly informed about my own defects. […]
For a bunch of reasons, my blogging is sporadic right now. If you are sincerely missing my delightful prose and deep love for all humanity, I offer below a reprint of some text I did today for an informational project. If you’ve searched for Chinese Slimming tea and found this page, then the good news […]
It has long been rumoured that Charles Dickens removed a “stave” from A Christmas Carol, in between III & IV. At the end of Stave III, Ebenezer Scrooge “lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him”, and at the start of Stave IV, he […]
I read a lot. I read surprising few books on tea. Of course, I’ve read my own a few times, and in the case of The Infusiast, should have read it a few more times before I okayed the print run with “1939” occurring twice where it should have been ‘1839’. I love novels that […]
A few posts ago, I had a good old-fashioned whinge about tea companies and their ilk either (a) offering me review samples or (b) offering me samples as a vendor (as I cover both camps) and then withdrawing the offer when they found out something that it’s pretty obvious: I live in Australia and it […]
Australia has gone nuts. We’ve had a tremendous furore, and it’s not been over poverty or abuse or the quest for world peace. No, the bone of contention is that most lacklustre of berries*; the avocado, a fruit so bad most people think it’s a vegetable. Apart from it’s previously brilliant name of “alligator pear”, […]
Behold, a wall of tea! An impenetrable fortress of tea. Twenty-one teas, in smart new boxes, aiming to stop reprobates such as coffee taking up space in the world’s drinking vessels. This is the culmination of many months’ work, when we decided that, after seven years, our trusty Mylar packets were no longer what we wanted […]
You may not know this, but a group of the world’s best tea bloggers have a secret form of communication. It’s quite like the secret Masonic handshake, except it involves Facebook messenger. Via this method, the hard-bitten core of tea bloggers have conversations that have the potential to shake the tea world to the very core. […]
It seems these days, you can’t go anywhere without smart people pairing tea and food. Well, when I say “anywhere” and “smart people”, I am specifically excluding the somewheres where dumb people think serving a teab*g to your guests is acceptable. Anyway today’s blog is inspired by some commentary around a spectacular event we are […]