Lord Devotea's Tea Spouts

Category: Tea and Food

  • Politically Correct Tea?

    Chairwoman? It’s enough to make me apoplectic. It seems that this idea of political correctness is everywhere, and so often completely incorrect. It’s like a new, more socially acceptable form of mathematics where Π is equal to 10, because it’s a lovely round number. Too bad if bridges fall down. In the politically correct stakes, it’s often gender politics that masks the politics of ignorance.…

  • A Tea-Stained Town.

    Those of you who awaited each day’s gripping recounting of my search for decent tea in Thailand last June might well expect similar tales of deprivation and heroism whenever I travel, and as we’ve slipped away to Melbourne for a few days, you may be breathlessly awaiting the sequel to those heady days. An earlier…

  • Inspiration!

    “Inspiration have I none/but to touch the flaming dove” As I have the world’s best memory for song lyrics (sadly teamed with the voice of a half-mad donkey), I can tell you I dredged that up from the memory of an album I last heard maybe 25 years ago, Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of…

  • Now is the Shoulder Season of our Discontent

    Readers of my blog of late have found it turned mostly into a tea travelogue. Not because I’ve changed focus, but because I tend to write about what I’m thinking of, and I think about my next decent cup of tea a lot. I have completely covered my efforts to source good loose leaf tea…

  • The Land of Plenty

    Once more hurling ourselves into the unknown in search of tea, it’s time for Tesco/Lotus a supermarket joint venture between Tesco of the UK and Lotus of Thailand. It’s large! The only other Tesco I’ve been is in in Pitsea, Essex and this would give that one a run for its money. Now, the whole…

  • Smarter than Smokie

    Regular readers will know that I am travelling at the moment. Yesterday, Lady Devotea and I celebrated 25 years of marriage. We met when I was 19, we’ve been inseparable ever since. We moved in together a few weeks after that, and we married almost exactly two years later. And yesterday was a remarkable day.…

  • Carry On Up The Spout

    Dear Mount Barker Council This is a difficult letter for me to write. Mainly because of etiquette or a sense of fairness. You see, this is an open letter. As well as writing it to you, I am publishing it on my blog “The Devotea’s Tea Spouts” at teatra.de , possibly the world’s most influential…

  • I’m not a Peasant Plucker, but…

    Radhika doesn’t really have time to enjoy the first rays of the watery sun. It will be baking hot soon enough. She reaches into the first Camellia Sinensis var. Assamica shrub of the many she will confront over the coming hours, and expertly picks the top two leaves, with a central bud, and drops them into the basket slung around her shoulder. Ranjiv’s hands fly as…