In my mind “a cup of tea” refers to a bag of Teaspoon Tips or Five Roses soaked in boiling water for a minute or two. Add to that sugar and milk and we all know what we will get. But those of us who have spent some time on the Queen’s mud patch, will know that tea is not always just tea over here. In fact “tea” can be any of several different meals, mealtimes and even events – central to it all though is the drinking of tea.
According to the United Kingdom Tea Council – yes there is one – the British took to tea drinking after the marriage in 1662 of Charles II to Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess who was a tea addict. She must have been something of a Princess Diana if she could convert an entire nation to soaking tried leaves in hot water. In those early years drinking tea was for the upper classes because it was expensive and heavily taxed. One consequence of the taxation was criminal activity. Britons just wanted to drink tea but could not afford it. By the late eighteenth century tea was at the centre of organised crime. Tea of low quality was smuggled onto the mud patch. It was mixed with leaves from other plants, some of it was already brewed and then dried again and if the colour was not right, it was coloured with sheep’s dung to make it look more like tea. By the nineteenth century philanthropists realised the value of tea drinking by trying to get the working classes to go teetotal. Tea was offered as a substitute for alcohol. Whech!
Now modern day research – according to some senseless media release I have just received – shows that Britons spend an estimated 24 minutes a day making tea at work alone. This is costing employers more than £400 (about R4322) a year per staff member. It amounts to 188 days and 21 hours spent idling by the kettle over a working lifetime. Four in ten people do a tea run for work mates at least twice a day and almost one in five boil a kettle for fellow workers once a day. The clever people – statisticians – calculate that with an average salary of R281000 a year, it means workers rack up R4500 a year in lost productivity waiting for the kettle to boil. Not to mention how research into tea and the costs of it, are also a loss of productivity.
While our employers might not be impressed, tea did however populate our language. We now have high tea, tea breaks, tea shops, teetotalers, tea gardens, tea dances and the ever so popular afternoon tea. When Anna, the 7th Duchess of Bedford, in the early 1800’s thought of having tea around five in the afternoon to kill the hunger pains between lunch and dinner, the Earl of Sandwich had the bright idea of putting a filling between two slices of bread. So afternoon tea even gave us the cucumber sandwich. Eventually the English liked the cucumber sandwich so much that it became a reason for social gatherings – called afternoon tea.
And this is the main reason why I have to decline whenever the Poms invite me for tea. It might be very much a part of British life, but drinking potentially soaked sheep’s dung and eating cucumber sandwiches shortly after work only fills the stomach and leaves no space for beer, which reminds me of that new spin bowler – Michael Beer – the Aussies just picked to try and prevent South Africa’s B cricket team from winning the Ashes for England. Now if there ever was a nation that would be happy to drink lukewarm diluted sheep’s dung merely to win the Ashes back, that would be the Aussies.
