Lord Devotea's Tea Spouts

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • In Search of that Perfect Chest

    With a pop-up tea shop in full swing once a month, we decided that we might try some tea chests as tables. Not an easy thing to do these days. Tea no longer comes in chests. It comes in paper sacks, vacuum bags, cardboard boxes, plastic – all sorts of ways. I had seen some…

  • The Only Way is Ethics

    A recent post by a fellow Tea Trader has got me thinking about issues like standards of behaviour, conflict of interest and business ethics generally. Now, let’s firstly dissect the phrase “business ethics”. As far as I’m concern that means ethical considerations in relation to running a business. It does not imply that “business ethics” is somehow different to “personal ethics”. And…

  • We Fancied a Cuppa

    Yesterday I drank some tea. Not an unusual occurrence, I think we can all agree without fear of contradiction. I was in the company of Lady Devotea. Again, not exactly unusual. It wasn’t even the first time we’ve been out and about and enjoyed our own teas served to us at a café/restaurant/tea room. But it was…

  • Dyb Dyb Duck

    Lady Devotea and I saw Elvis Costello at the Thebarton Theatre in Adelaide sometime in the 90s. Much as we like his recordings, in person he was aloof: ignoring the audience and seemed intent on adding a discordant note to his more popular songs. It was self-indulgent on his part and we did not enjoy it much. A few weeks ago we saw him…

  • Put your money where my mouth is

    Well, thanks for reading. You might be a regular or you might be one of the 47% of readers each time I blog that is new to this site. You may be a lovely tea person, or you may be a filthy spammer. For this exercise, it doesn’t matter. I’d like to think some people enjoy my…

  • Output

    I once put in a pop-up sprinkler system to water our garden. That was in the days when it was sprinklers that were pop-up, not restaurants.  The first stage involved measuring the water flow rate. This was done by using two scientific implements, a watch and a bucket. I filled the bucket with water and timed the…

  • Reality Check? No, Thanks!

    I remember a joke told by the late comedian Dave Allen, in a TV show I watched in the 70s as a young teenager. The story, possibly apocryphal, possibly not, is about the infamous “firebrand preacher” or ‘insane bigot who exhorted his followers to pile violence upon violence ” (depending on your viewpoint),  The Reverend Dr Ian Paisley. The story goes that Paisley was thundering a lecture…

  • The Last Place on Earth…

    Las Vegas. Why would I want to go there? Its very name conjures up images: not always good ones.  Mostly of course, it’s murders. I watched at least the first six seasons of CSI and I learned that in Las Vegas, a bunch of people get murdered every day and it takes 45 minutes (including commercials)…

  • “Arise, Sir Devotea.” Beep. Beep. Beeeep!

    Wouldn’t you know it, in the middle of getting knighted for services to tea, my alarm went off and woke me up. Still, I thought it could be an omen, so I checked the mail box to make sure there wasn’t anything official in it from Her Maj.  Nothing. Looks like I’ll be passed over again this time for the New Year’s Honours list.…

  • Steps to a Tea Spangled Christmas

    I’ve been quiet of late on the blogging front. On-line generally.  A few blogs here and there, a few incredibly funny or incredibly venomous comments – the best ones are both. But not much. I notice it has coincided with with a couple of other bloggers also going to ground a bit. Between @lazy_literatus and…

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