So far this month, this weblog has been about many things. Tea, hithertofore, has not been foremost among them, but it is this subject I must draw upon this evening.
I have this reasonably well known thing about tea. Real tea. At this moment within this house there are six separate types of tea, from Earl Grey, Pear and Pineapple, Strawberry tea, Old English Fruit tea and Sticky Toffee flavoured tea though to the standard PG Tips tea bags, plus three separate varieties of green tea (Which I don’t drink, but LoneCat does).
For the process of brewing ideal Tea, there are Teapots. There are, in fact, seven teapots, from the big black one when we have Visitors (which is currently under my bed) to LoneCat’s delicately patterned china teapot, the Useless Silver one (where the handle is always too hot to pick up) and a teapot of CCooke’s which we took with us by accident when we moved out of Cambridge, which is somewhat unfortunately shaped like a white cat. This is unfortunate because the tea is expelled from the mouth of said cat, making it look like the cat is vomiting tea. Plus, it’s a bugger to clean.
But the teapots that get used most are my little ones, of which there are three. A blue one, a green one, and the Red One that has never been used and will be given to Supermouse when I remember to do so. These teapots are nice. They include built-in strainers, are just enough for two mugs of tea (with a bit left over for the dregs to swim in) and have never been known to explode.
You may find the presence of the idea of an exploding teapot to be somewhat of a surprise in the above paragraph, teapots not generally being known for their excitable personality, but you would still not be quite so surprised as I was several minutes ago, when one of said teapots belied the previous trend and decided now was the time best chosen for exploding whilst in my hand.
Fortunately the teapot was not currently carrying any tea, due to it’s explosion being whilst I was carefully washing it, and attempting to realign the spout (which is part of the glass globe of the teapot) with the handle (Which is part of the plastic base, to which it the globe is held but not attached) and must – assumably – have squeezed the glass globe slightly beyond it’s optimal holding weight, leading to said explosion.
Did I mention the teapot was glass? It’s glass. It shattered into one large, two medium and many small pieces, several of which were gentlemanly enough to leap point first into my waiting skin in order to assist later retrieval.
Thus my blue teapot has perished, and will be a teapot no more. No great loss, as said teapots cost an entire new English pound to replace.
So I’m recovering, slowly, nursing the lacerations to my hand with care
and, of course, a cup of slowly steeping tea in front of me.