Teatime
The world’s gone mad, but at least there’s tea
Green tea is for the morning.
As the kids make their beds and brush their teeth, I boil the kettle. I start with a cup of flavoured green tea from my growing stash of tins and teas. Dragon Fruit, Berry Blend, Sencha Rose, Mint.
Years ago, way back when I left the house for work, I wanted to pick out a nice green tea to share with my office, “One that’s not bitter, please.” The man behind the counter didn’t glare at me, exactly, but his words did, and his tone was clipped.
“If it’s bitter, you’re doing it wrong.” He said this in French, and it stung. But who has time to boil water and let it cool until it’s ready?
Nowadays, around ten o’clock, the kids take a break. I fill the kettle and boil the water again. It sits and cools while I choose a tin, then use my special spoon to fill up my little Nessie tea diffuser with the loose leaves. I let the temperature drop to about 97, maybe 95 degrees, before pouring it over; it steeps for three minutes, then I remove the diffuser and discard the sodden leaves.
He was right. I had been doing it wrong.
In the chaos of homeschooling, little rituals have become more important. Sometimes, no, often, in the course of an entire day, my tea is the only thing over which I have any control. It is a calming, joyful ritual. It’s a time to breathe and reflect on simplicity and acceptance.
Camping tea is necessarily different. You boil water in a pot, pour it into your mug, pop in your teabag, and leave it there till noon, topping it up with hot water every half an hour or so. Sometimes, it’s just hot water, not boiling, and there are usually ashes in it. But everything tastes better when you’re camping.
After lunch, anytime up to 3 o’clock, I switch to black tea. Plain PG Tips, Assam, Ceylon or Earl Grey, each with a splash of milk. It’s warming and heartening, soothing. The last time I had tea with a friend, we discussed how we never really “got” tea until we moved to London. We didn’t realize how nice it is to have a cuppa with a friend, especially on a damp day.
After 3 o’clock, the caffeine will keep me awake at night, so herbal (no milk), any one of a giant selection from my tea box, keeps me company at my desk, or on the couch after the kids go to bed. It helps me not snack. It helps me not miss wine too much during the week. Late, late-night tea is always my Insomniac Blend.
On weekends, we don’t go to Starbucks on the way to wherever it is we’re not going anymore. Instead, I make myself and the kids lattes.
It’s fine, lovely, in fact. We make a pot of Masala Chai or London Fog and serve it with biscuits. We brew up Monster Mash, and let them add their own milk and sugar — probably too much, but that’s ok too. Some days, I make scones, and they’ve learned how clotted cream and jam are essentials. I love the tradition and ritual of tea, and I love that my kids love it too.
My husband and I joke about our “savings from Starbucks” — that, on top of saved transit fares and lunches on the go, and any other sundry amounts that get spent when you actually leave the house, we’re also not spending £12 a week on coffee (him) or £9 a week on tea lattes (me). Plus the £20+ it costs to stop there “for snacks” for the kids while running errands on a Saturday.
I shudder. That’s who we were, and who we never wanted to be.
I justify ordering from Hebden Tea for me and buying him nice coffee beans and a new manual burr grinder. He brews his pot every morning before joining us in the dining room, then switches to tea after lunch.
We miss leaving the house, our schools and our offices. But here, we are safe, we are healthy, we have tea. That will have to do.
Karen (Power) Hough is a writer, editor and blogger with an Honours BSc. in Human Kinetics. She currently lives in London with her husband, three energetic kids and a codependent dog. She recently upgraded to PG Tips Gold, and thinks it’s worth the extra 2p per mug.