Restaurants | 17 February 2007

My partner is a total tea fascist and whenever I make a pot it is never, ever right. It’s: ‘Did you use fresh water?’ Then it’s: ‘You used re-boiled, didn’t you?’ And then, with a sniffy look: ‘How long exactly did you leave this to brew?’ When I give up, think sod him, and just dunk a teabag into a cup for myself, does he leave me alone? No. I then get: ‘Ooh, make yourself a cup of tea, why don’t you? After all the pots I’ve made for you…’. You may well ask what has kept us together all these years, to which I don’t really have an answer although I can say, with some certainly, that it isn’t the tea, just as it isn’t the sex*.

However, I have noted lately that tea is becoming just so in. In fact, tea may be the new coffee just as coffee was once the new tea and brown was the new black until black became the new brown again and so on and so on and maybe, for all I know, the turnip is now the new goose-feather duvet, although I’m betting you don’t sleep as well.