Are you fussy about your tea?
(or coffee).
First, what do you call your cup of tea? Just tea? Or are you like my mum, ‘Ooooh I need a cuppa,’ as she sits down after a trip to town.
Are you more northern, and need a ‘brew’ to perk you up for the rest of the day?
‘I can’t have anything sweet,’ a friend told me yesterday, ‘else I’ll need a brew with it.’
A brew, I mused, a brew. How homely does that sound!
I call my tea just plain tea. I am not from the south like my mum, because I grew up in another country. I am not from the north, I just live here. My accent is different; I say ‘dinner’ instead of ‘tea’ and ‘lunch’ instead of ‘dinner’. So I just have plain old tea.
My husband makes rubbish tea. Sometimes when he makes me tea I have to wait for him to disappear so I can pour it down the sink and make a fresh one.
Tea bag in, one teaspoon of sugar. Pour boiling water on top, let sit for a good 3-5 minutes to ‘brew’ (maybe Northerners call it ‘brew’ because like their tea strong?), then a glug of milk, a good stir, teabag out, another thorough stir and bob’s your second cousin.
My husband loves my tea. Says I make the best tea he has ever had. I don’t know if that is a ploy to keep me making him tea.
He has to have something sweet with his tea. His favourite biscuit is the chocolate chip shortbread. Mine is a viennese whirl. Yum. Or a viennese chocolate finger.
My mum likes to dunk chocolate digestives in tea.
When we were small, she would give us a biscuit and we could dunk it in her tea.
‘Can I dip my biscuit in your tea?’ we would ask, whenever we saw her sit down with a mug.
How do you like your tea? And do you have something to go with it? Do you like tea with company? Or a book? Or a scenic scene? Or just by yourself on a sunny afternoon or raining evening?
Ocean Bream 