Cuppa

Today

I suppose you could describe Paul and me as "tea bores". We like to use china pots and proper tea leaves. The pot should be warmed and the freshly drawn water properly boiling. And so on and so forth.

In England tea is offered as a restorative, stimulant, relaxant, social lubricant, accompaniment to disasters, both emotional and physical. What was the first thing you had if your house was bombed in the War? A nice cup of tea. Policemen bearing bad news put the kettle on. It wakes you up in the morning and settles you down at night.

So it's quite clearly more than just a mildly stimulating herbal drink and. quite frankly, Red Bush, chamomile and herbal teas just don't cut the mustard. And offering tea is innocent; it doesn't have the double-entendre of "would you like to come in for a coffee?".

Even so, it also seems that tea's ability to hit the spot is also affected by time of day, mood etc. Today, my lunchtime tea tasted so good that I had another one, which is unusual. And it even tasted nearly as good as the first

In My Day

This is never so true as with the tea you're offered after childbirth. Hospital tea follows none of the rules I laid out above and has probably been made with water boiled for hours in an urn, uses industrial sized teabags, is stewed in a giant metal teapot and poured into a hospital cup (with a totally redundant saucer).

After struggling to produce Lizzie for hours and hours, after they wheeled her off for a well-earned rest and after they'd patched me up, they brought me a cup of tea. It was proper NHS tea in all its glory and didn't it taste like nectar!

Suddenly all the pain and anxiety receded for a few minutes and Paul and I smiled at each other over the rims of our chunky china cups.

When I had Becky, the whole job took less time and was altogether less of a struggle. But the worst part was that, after they'd brought me my tea, I felt so sleepy that I dozed off and didn't awake until it was stone cold. And ever since I've felt a bit deprived as though I was cheated out of a basic human right.

How people cope who don't drink tea is beyond me, since, quite clearly, it's the backbone of Britain and an essential part of ones moral fibre.