For years, many of us have dedicated ourselves to the war on teab*gs. One of my tea blogger friends posted the other day about another success in this war, but it perversely made me wonder: is it ever winnable? And do we want to win? And what do we want to win? And who are […]
“If you can’t prove what you want to prove, demonstrate something else and pretend they are the same thing. In the daze that follows the collision of statistics with the human mind, hardly anyone will notice the difference.” – How To Lie With Statistics, D Huff, 1954 This week, there’s going to be a higher […]
“I know the nicest thing I ever had on the Kokoda Trail was a cup of tea given to me by the Salvation Army. And I hated tea that never had milk or sugar in it; this didn’t have any in it and I loved it, I wanted more. I had half a cup, that’s […]
Today I’m going to share with you my favourite food blogger. Shannon blogs about healthy food…theoretically. Let’s back up and talk about me. Of course. When I started this blog, I knew I was going to give myself permission to discuss anything I damn well wanted. Sure, I had to work tea into every post, […]
Part One: The Reaction I’m a little unhappy with a blog post by someone else. Obviously, the smart thing to do is keep my trap shut, but I’m going to invoke the privilege of the elderly (as I turned 50 a couple of days ago) to find fault with the young man involved. It’s not […]
I got a nasty shock the other day, perusing a global tea report. Well, not the actual report, because access to that is over $19,500 and that seems pretty steep. But a report on the report. Here it is, if you want to check it out yourself. It’s less funny than my round-up, though. 72 […]
I get asked questions all the time, here’s one from little Mandy of Manchester, UK: Dear Lord Devotea, do you condone biscuit-dunking in tea? It’s a vexed question, Mandy, and I’ll try to answer it succinctly: Yes. As succinct as that is, I’ll have to add a few qualifiers. About nine pages’ worth, if I’m on […]
If I go into a café, bistro, restaurant, hotel or any other eating establishment, and they are the sort of pathetic, standardless, thieving charlatans that have teab*gs, then naturally I recoil in horror and often make my displeasure known. You’d expect nothing less, right? In fact, often friends and family members will apologise for my […]
Today’s quite sensible title is probably a relief to those who question my more esoteric ones. As you all probably know, Percy’s Tea Strainer Treble Place Major is one of the Treble Place Major bell ringing methods. It proudly takes its place alongside Lou’s Carrot Treble Place Major, Cockup Bridge Treble Place Major and the others in its […]
We were watching a David Attenborough show about silk the other day, and he mentioned Leizu. It seems that according to Chinese legend, Leizu was sitting under a tree in about 2700 when a silk cocoon fell into her tea. She watched it unravel, and from there, a silk industry was born. Pretty amazing, and yet, pretty […]