97. A letter to Terry ✒️ #22
An insult to teatime, an impediment to postal efficiency, and a well-placed comma.
Dear Terry,
Thank you for your latest letter, which of course I enjoyed immensely. I was particularly enamoured by your drawings, each of which was more chortlesome than the last; in fact, I spilled even more tea than usual in the reading of your missive. 🤣
Remind me, Terry, are you as partial to a cup of the good stuff as I am? I seem to remember that you’re a fan of tea leaves, whereas I am pitched firmly in the bag-dunking camp.
I was horrified when at peak cup-of-tea o’clock last Thursday – it was just gone 4pm – this story appeared on the BBC News app just as I was waiting for the kettle to boil:
Terry, I am not a ‘tea purist’. What is that anyway? Tea is such a personal thing; I mean, I like tea the way I make it, so of course I view tea made by others with the necessary suspicion.
I don’t like to leave my tea to brew. I love my cuppa strong, don’t get me wrong, but I spurn brewing tea – or, as I call it, ‘leaving it to stew’. That makes tea that’s murky and tannic, with a film on top not unlike that nasty sheen on the surface of a stagnant puddle. Besides all that, tea that has been left to brew isn’t hot.
Tea has to be drunk at scalding point. It’s the law.1
In my hands a cup of tea takes mere moments to make. Here’s the recipe, should you care to up your own tea-drinking game:
Pop a teabag into a large mug.
Add boiling water almost to the top.
Use a sturdy teaspoon to beat, squash and squeeeeeze that teabag against the side of the mug.
Hoik2 the squeezed teabag out of the mug.
Add a tiny splash of milk, and…
…BAM!
Never mind 60 seconds – as you can see from the timer mine’s a 43-second brew. It’s a shame that PG Tips hadn’t asked me first – I could have saved them £49 million of their £50 million spend right there.
Oh Terry, you’re going to laugh at this. At me. 😳
The BBC News article reported the thoughts on the 60-second teabag of Diaz Ayub, managing director of the Tea Group3:
I’m a very literal person, and those words had confused me for a moment. What, pray, is a ‘tea pit’?
Well, it must surely be a pit of tea! I was delighted. ‘Perfect material for a letter to Terry!’ I thought. ‘I can segue from one of my favourite subjects – tea – to one of Terry’s. This is a pothole full of tea! It’s a pothole story!’ 🙌
(At this point potholes climbed dramatically in my estimation.)
Before I dived too deep into the tea pit, though, I put on my sensible hat and enlisted Google’s help in finding the proper definition for it. I mean, I didn’t want to make a complete idiot of myself.
But Terry, I am such an idiot.
And Google – which has its own built-in typo detector – is not.
😳
In my defence, Terry, the BBC News article did show ‘tea pit’ as two separate words, whereas ‘teapot’ is always one.
To my amusement – and yes, slight disappointment – when I clicked back to the news story at a similar time this afternoon I noticed that the typo had been corrected.
Yeah.
See ya, tea pit.
I’ve been entertaining myself by analysing another lost list these past few days, and during my habitual days-late catch-up with the Saturday Telegraph over my lunchbreak I was delighted to come across some correspondence about shopping lists. Here are two of my favourite letters to the editor:
Your news of the recent appearance of a sinkhole in south London alarmed me, but for me the panic was less about the hole itself and more about the resulting risk to the services of Royal Mail.
Any impediment to the efficiency of Royal Mail requires attention right away. Which reminds me, Terry, now that Christmas is less than a hundred days away isn’t it about time to start worrying about strike season? I’ve just been reminding myself of the strike-related Christmas card chaos I’d written to you about soon after we’d begun our correspondence.
There were more references in your letter to the works of your friend Billy Wagglestaff4 than I could shake a stick at5, Terry, and I am pleased to see that like the bard himself you have a gift for the correct use of punctuation.
You have kindly granted me permission to reproduce your illustration of a pivotal scene from Macbeth below, complete with caption:
If you had omitted the comma I might have been having to post this letter to your holding cell at Scotland Yard. As you can see, my removal of it for illustrative purposes below has changed the course of the play entirely:
😲
Your crime – given your written admission of guilt and your hand-drawn depiction of the scene – is indefensible.
Thank you for the heads-up about your proposed ‘Discovering Potholes’ tours! As soon as I’ve checked the terms of my life insurance for any sinkhole exclusions to my policy I’ll be signing up to your inaugural event.
Terry, I’ll see you there!
All the very best, as always,
Rebecca
⬇️
PS: I hadn’t heard of the ‘Pothole Preservation Orders’ you mentioned, although I suspect that the majority of potholes in the British Isles are already secretly covered by such. How else would they all be escaping repair?
⬇️
PPS: I fear – as evidenced by the ‘PPS’ at the top of the sign in your illustration below – that potholes remain a low priority. As such, any plans by those who are actually in charge of these things are, like this PPS, simply an afterthought. 😉
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Okay, it’s not the law. Please take due care.
However, I always choose to drink hot drinks and eat hot food very hot indeed, to the extent that it is remarked upon by non-family members. I cannot drink coffee made using one of those fancy pod machines because it’s so far off hot that to describe it as ‘tepid’ would be too generous.
Technical term.
The Tea Group organises National Tea Day, which is to be held next on Sunday April 21, 2024.
Reader, this is what Terry calls his mate William Shakespeare.
Couldn’t resist! 😉
Good morrow! I will respond properly in my next letter, Rebecca. In that epistle I will explain the correct and proper way to make tea, including the precise temperature to which the water must be heated. As for one-minute tea, perhaps the less said about that the better.
Chortlesome! I could not think of a better word to describe your correspondence with Terry. I love it that you let us in on it. A very instructive tea making video. Cute as can be. I am proud to say I make mine exactly as you do, massaging the hell out of the bag, but NEVER letting it steep. I only use a tea pit when I have special guests. I just wonder what that lady did with 102 mushrooms....