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 […]
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. […]
One thing tea has in common with all other agricultural products is that each season produces a crop that is subtly different from all others. In most agricultural settings, variance is to be avoided. Supermarkets demand tomatoes or apples that are a certain size and shape, unblemished, and that will sit in a cold store […]
The storm before the storm: The internet has been losing it’s mind. Well, my version of it, anyway. Over the last 20 hours my feeds in Twitter and Facebook, as well as my inbox, have been full of messages about a product called “No More Tea Bags”. Now, while “No More Tea Bags” sounds like […]
As a blogger, I get contacted a lot by tea vendors. “Please review our tea” they say. “We’ll send you some, and you can write lovely things about it”. This is often a very bad idea. If you’re a tea vendor, there are some really good reasons why you shouldn’t do it. However, I am […]
Every so often, I find in response to a picture that I or someone else posts there is criticism of the drinker or the server in relation to the drinking vessel. Opinions as to what type of cups one should, or more likely should not, sup from are a mainstay on Facebook. Well, I have to […]
Last week, Lady Devotea and I found ourselves at an afternoon tea. Not a big surprise, it’s somewhat of an occupational hazard for us. We were surrounded by members of The Bonnet Squad. Now, it is traditional to describe people who are so incredibly lost in the world of Jane Austen as “Janeites”, but quite frankly, […]