I’ve been at this blogging lark for over seven years, and looking back, it seems to mainly be a series of posts that switch between unintentionally abusive rants and intentionally abusive rants. Every so often, I try to be serious, and usually fail. The thing I am really terrible at is using the blog to promote our […]
Some days, I just get sick of the news. Of being riveted to a procession of unpleasant stories; rarely natural disasters these days but more about the propensity of human beings to believe that our differences in politics / religion / lifestyles make us morally superior, and therefore justifies the most repugnant behaviour. Some days […]
This week marks the passing of the wonderful actor Geoffrey Baylden, who played the eponymous Catweazle in that brilliant TV show from my childhood, but this post is not about that form of sorcery. Rather, it is about drinking out of saucers. I was sharing a cup of tea with a friend the other […]
The cat you see pictured here was named Lily, AKA Mr Lil, and he recently passed away. You might, immediately, find the name confusing, but when he was born in the middle of the night on our bed, Lady Devotea may have been mistaken about his gender, and by the time we worked it out, […]
I know that many of my readers believe that the tea industry is ladies in colourful saris picking tea, cheerful overseers thanking them for their hard work as they tip wicker baskets into lovely piles of leaves, lovely plantation managers wheeling and dealing in a cheerful fashion to get the best price for their high […]
Yesterday, Lady Devotea and I were at an Easter Fair, and so were quite a lot of other people. If fact, we were meeting up with six of them. As we all know, fairs are sometimes a place to get really excellent tea. Perhaps as often as 1% of the time. As we also know, […]
Ok, thanks to so many of you… I am unwell, and had decided to take a few weeks off of blogging. And then, unbidden into my inbox / Messenger/ Facebook/carrier pigeon hole came multiple copies of a story from ABC news, along with cries of outrage. And I looked upon it, and I was displeased. […]
Tomorrow is my birthday, and as usual, there will be world-wide celebrations and much rejoicing. However, this year, I though I’d bestow a gift instead, to all of humanity. There are two things that are vital for us to pass on to our children, a love of learning and a love of tea. It’s best […]
When I was a teenager, way back in the early 1980s, there was thing called the Doomsday Clock, and it counted down the theoretical time that the human ‘day” had left to run, i.e. when it hit midnight KABOOM! and to quote Roger Waters* at the time “it looks like the human race is run”. […]
Two days ago, The Devotea team held an event in a library. Over the last year or so we have done so regularly. Our HQ is Adelaide, Australia, which for reasons of seething contempt and bitter jealousy, is reputed for only two things in Australia: The “high murder rate” which is in fact less than […]