Thanks to a post started by Lu Ann, author of The Cup Of Life, I’ve been tagged by Jen at International Tea Moment (@teamoment on twitter) to answer a stack of impertinent questions and then link some other poor soul to do the same. 1) First, let’s start with how you were introduced & fell in love […]
I was carrying a small bag of chamomile the other day… “WHAT!!”, I hear you interrupt, leaping to your feet. “CHAMOMILE? YOU? YOU HATE IT” Yes, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I was carrying a bag of chamomile. Ok, so that might seem an unexpected thing for us to stock […]
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents* — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind* which swept up the streets (for it is in London* that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely* agitating the scanty flame* of the lamps that […]
A few years ago, I missed the boat. I wrote a book that had a lot of vampires in it; and whilst Stephanie Meyer has been so successful with that particular genre that it makes me want to smash something, my book was not a commercial success. And yet, in my books, rather than mooning […]
This week, we’ve lifted the lid on some new products. We decided we wanted to do a joint venture; and as we were adamant about how fussy we were about our partner in this, we actually founded the other party, bringing in business partners with the expertise we needed. So the owners of The Devotea […]
There was a classic series of TV ads in the 1970s in Australia, complete with jingle. It consisted of various scenarious where someone is enjoying themselves, only to be told that they suffer from offensive body odour. The solution? Palmolive Gold, a soap with built-in deodorant. The basic premise was that if you suffer from […]
There’s bad tea – it’s always cheap. Although if you buy it in certain circumstances – such as in a bus-shaped tin with “Souvenir of London” in it, then it’s not. OK, so bad tea isn’t always cheap. There’s good tea. That’s expensive. Right? Well, no. Mostly wrong. If you have a cup of Cola, […]
The Fourth of July is special to many of my American friends. Sure, it maybe should have been the 2nd of July, sometimes it’s called Independence Day and the declaration of Independence was probably actually signed in August according to Wikipedia, but it’s quite specific when you refer to it as “The Fourth of July”. In […]
On board an Amtrak train, knowing that the only way to get good tea is to boil the kettle we have concealed under the table using their free electricity and then using our travel teapot, I’m pondering two things that occurred at 30th street station in Philadelphia just before we departed, whilst avoiding the gaze […]
Lady Devotea and I recently spent a couple of days with @jackie and @peter from Tea Trade. It was almost a 100% perfect experience. It was good company and good tea, plenty of both. It was amazingly hospitable hosts, a lovely and very novel part of America for us and it was quite relaxing after […]