I like a nice cup of tea or 'cup of taaaay' as people think i say it. I've always liked it, ever since i was a nipper...in our house no ill short of death couldn't be cured with a nice cup of tea and then if someone died, that's what you've have to recover from it.
Growing up we had two sorts of tea, our tea and Thompsett Tea. Mum was English, but had acclimatized or was strange enough not to really like very strong tea, so we tended to have weak (relatively) milky tea. No sugar of course cos that would rot your teeth...and then you'd have to go to the murder house (school dental clinic)...but that's a whole nother blog!
Tompsett tea was what you drank when you went to stay at Auntie Yvonne's place. Strong enough to stand the spoon up in apparently...and they were allowed sugar in their tea too, the lucky sods. Being a curious kid, I once tried to pour enough sugar in to work out how much you needed to stand the spoon up and got smacked for it too i think. When going to the Tompsetts, you always had a cup of tea when you got there after the long (3 to 4 hour) car ride with your sloooow driving mother and tea with every meal and in-between if needed....she was my mothers sister after all. Tea cooled you down if it was hot (and we're not talking fancy iced stuff here) and warmed you up if you were cold. Forever more Thompsett Tea is what our family calls very strong tea. From the industrial stuff they give you in motorway cafes to accidentally leaving the bag in too long in your own cup, anything a darker brown than milk chocolate is Tompsett tea.
Now whenever I make it back to NZ one of the first things I do is go visit the Tompsetts 'Tea rooms' as we jokingly call them and have a cup of tea with Yvonne and Allen. Whenever my baby brother and i or my cousin Geoff (who's a Tompsett of course) get together one of us will suggest putting the jug on (electric kettle to those you non Kiwi) for a cup of tea, to which the other will reply...'ohhh, that would be nice, nothing like a nice cup of tea' Tea ( and bad puns) may well be one of the few things that actually binds our loose knit family together. We all drank it at Nana's and we all have it in a cupboard at home. We've might have strayed into herbal tea territory, but will always drink the real thing as comfort and companionship. Bell if you're in NZ and Tetleys if you are in the UK
I was quite surprised to find the MIL didn't own a jug and quietly horrified to find she made it in the microwave (sorry MIL, it still doesn't taste the same) I do quite like iced tea when made from real tea without heaps of artificial flavors and Snapple is not too bad at a pinch. Green tea or jasmine tea is great with Japanese and Chinese food but when you really need it, you can't beat a nice cup of tea.
In the global scale of things I guess I'm not a big tea drinker...don't usually have it in the morning (that's what a coffee kickstart is for) and not late at night (I'm either partaking in 'adult beverages' or attacking my hoarded stash of imported Milo...but I do like a nice cup of tea in the afternoon. I'm not sure what they put in the tea-bags here in the office...think it might be the leftovers from what they put in tea bags for the rest of the world. It's dusty and anaemic and I have to put 2 bags in at once to get to normal strength. I think I'm pretty safe from Tompsetts tea at work.
Girls - Don't forget to bring those Tetley tea bags over next week, I really miss the good stuff !
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