Making an Inception

If you loved the movie Inception, then you’ll love the fact that I am going to go on a rant about a guy who went on a rant about an article. In it, he bought his own arrogance and prejudice to the fore, and hey, I’m comfortable with doing the same. In fact, I rarely […]

Westholme is Where The Heart Is

As I start writing this, I wonder if I will end up apologising for it. You might think that I often wonder if my unfettered sarcasm and wholesale sprays of invective, combined with poor attention to detail will have that result, but you’d be wrong. It’s not that at all. My readers generally love that. […]

Kickstarting Nepal

Some of my readers are other tea bloggers, and so I’ll just suggest right now, that sometimes it’s hard to keep up. I have a vaguely once-a-week goal and usually I stick to it. I usually write Sunday Morning Australian time, and sometimes if I have a busy Sunday, I can skip a week. Sometimes […]

Because I Can

I can add milk to my tea, if I want. Usually, I don’t want to, but let’s say I do. A tablespoon of milk is about 13 calories. So if one has five cups of tea per day with a tablespoon in each, then it provides about 2% of the daily caloric intake that someone […]

Pop Culture

I’m on record as being unmoved by both Japanese teas and Japanese tea culture and ceremonies. Taking your shoes off, sitting on a rush mat and admiring a stick in a vase does not in any way cause me to suddenly enjoy tea that is too bitter, and/or too thin, and/or looks like second-hand bile […]

The Blacklist

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 […]

Cover Me! I’m going in.

Reading some recent press reports, there’s a blockade in Darjeeling that might well affect the tea business. The guys behind it are Gorkhas, which is sometimes transliterated as Gurkhas. So, if the word seems familiar, it’s because Gurkha regiments have been part of the British Army for a long time. An indigenous people of Nepali […]

Pensive from PA to Penn

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 […]

Full Circle: Heroes and First Posts

This post is a bit of a re-run. But a special one. Since 2009, I have written over 200 tea blog posts. I virtually stopped all of my other blogging, though I do write books and get a few magazine assignments here and there. Some of you may know that my tea blog did not […]

International Tea Day. Sort of.

This week, International Tea Day occurs. It’s December 15th every year. It’s not a day devoted to drinking copious quantities of  tea – that’s every day. It’s  a day dedicated to thinking about tea workers. So, I was thinking about it yesterday, because here in Australia, Dec 15th is indeed yesterday. I wasn’t thinking about it as well as I […]

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