Would you care to sit with me
For a cup of English tea
Very twee, very me
Any sunny morning ...
— Paul McCartney, “English Tea” (2005)
It was the old man who introduced me to English tea in the 1970s. Long a coffee aficionado — for more than 20 years, a pot of Sanka simmered on the electric stove from morning until bedtime — for some unknown reason, he switched to tea.
Perhaps the term “English tea” is misleading. It wasn't the traditional black tea mix of which the Brits remain so fond — Dad used either Nestea or whatever brand of tea bags could be had at the grocer — but rather how he “doctored” it.
As with his coffee, his tea was loaded with plenty of sugar and ample milk, “just the way the English like it,” he once told me. The habit stuck. With good reason. For there's nothing better than a freshly brewed cup of “Dad-doctored” tea.
That sweet and creamy elixir has so many practical purposes, from helping to plan a difficult day at dawn's first light, to warming the hands (and the soul) working outside on a brisk late autumnal afternoon, to helping trigger all those drunk-with-comfort, day-is-done feelings that, for some odd reason, won't allow you to budge from the chair in front of the fireplace.
Eighteenth-century British poet William Cowper once characterized tea as “cups that cheer but not inebriate.” He obviously knew not of what he wrote.
— Colin McNickle
