Tea Time (Take 2)

So here I am in this quaint...no, I can’t do that one again. So here I am then in this stubborn...nope. That won’t do either. Well, darn, here I am in this place I am trying to figure out while madly falling in love with it. How is that?

It’s a bit of a scary thing to fall head over heals for someone you don’t really know. But it’s even more hopeless to become enthralled with a culture that will forever identify you as a stranger.

And that much is for sure: I don’t know the first thing about being English. I am clueless when it comes to the Royals, mince pie, and, for that matter, tea.

Unfortunately, I thought I could feign it. After all, how difficult can it be to make a cup of tea. Most Brits nowadays use tea bags anyway. So by buying the real thing...actual loose-leaf Yorkshire tea, I was light years ahead of the game. Or so I thought.

That was last week. Since then, I have suffered unspeakable agony, almost peed my pants, and developed a hideous rash on one side of my neck. Not undeservedly, I have to admit.

What was I thinking?

Well, I’ll tell you. I thought that it was a ‘smashing’ idea to have my dear new neighbor, Mrs. Bumble, over for a 3 o’ clock cup of tea together with her friend who also happens to live on our street. In these past weeks, Mrs. Bumble had been very kind to me and the children.

For one, she didn’t as much as frown when Julian nonchalantly ripped out the first tender signs of Spring from her front yard when we were passing by the other day. But then, she also went out of her way to introduce us to a young family with children the same age as ours in addition to hooking us up to an organic milk delivery service and a highly acclaimed orthodontist.

No, Mrs. Bumble didn’t deserve what she had coming when she set foot in my house earlier today. And it is with the most sincere guilt-stricken remorse that I confess to what I did. But even if ignorance is no excuse I must say this much in my defense: I was trying to do the right thing.

In the week leading up to my innocent proposal, I had purchased not only a reputable brand of tea but also what I had believed to be a proper tea pot. Let it be said, this was but another proof of my ignorance.

I don’t know what exactly I bought but it didn’t serve me properly in my attempt to make that perfect little three o’ clock cup of tea. Again, I have only myself to blame because I didn’t even test the device prior to three-oh-five o’clock today.

As I said, I thought I knew what I was doing. After all, just a couple of days ago another helpful neighbor had loaned me his worn out edition of the highly acclaimed Mrs. Beeton household reference book to look up just exactly how to prepare and serve a proper cup of tea.

Tea, tea pot, terse three-step instructions, and a load of good intentions should be enough to achieve a mild success. So I thought.

By 3:11 today, however, I was bathed in sweat and showing the first signs of a blotchy rash.

Of course, with a maximum steep time of three to three and a half minutes, I was already more than two minutes over due...and still I was nowhere close to solving the riddle of how to get the boiling hot tea out of the pot and into the cup without the leaves.

The water had been poured (after appropriately having ‘warmed’ the pot beforehand) and the tea was sitting there, when it suddenly occurred to me that possibly I should have used some kind of filter for the tea. But on second thought it seemed to me that the pot was much too deep and wide to allow the tea leaves to even touch the water if they had been suspended in a filter.

Had I bought the wrong pot? Had I misread the measurements? Was I about to ruin tea time for two very fine ladies?

At that point the urge to pee suddenly manifested itself. But since steeping tea requires immediate action, I instead resolved to dart around my kitchen in an effort to locate a cup-size sifter.

Needless to say, I found none. And despite my cursing at long gone maids, movers, and miserable two year-olds, the situation wasn’t getting any better as the tea was steeping quietly with an unconcealed indifference to me and my desperate situation.

By the time I appeared with my devilish concoction in the door frame of our living room, it was 3:15. I was doomed.

The agony that followed in watching Mrs. Bumble and her friend take a first and then a brave second sip was unparalleled. Neither of them said a word nor did they add more milk. Unlike my disheveled self, both of them served as a lesson in composure and equanimity. Mrs. Bumble even smiled encouragingly at me before she raised the cup a third time.

At that point I broke down. “Don’t do it,” I shouted. “Please, it will kill you. I am so sorry. Let me try this again.” And in a frantic attempt to save lives if not honor I stumbled away from the table and back into my kitchen.

I did manage to brew another cup of tea by pouring the tea first through a veggie colander into a large measuring jug and from there back into the pot to serve it in just under three and a half minutes while apologizing for the amount of noise I had made in the kitchen.

But I am not sure as to why I had to top it all off by adding my ill-advised version of British humor.

“At least, I am glad to report,” I announced with a deceptively confident smile, “That I caught the rat that was having a good old time swimming around at the bottom of the tea pot.”

No, I didn’t deserve a smile. What I deserved was for my clothes to melt away and my bladder to finally let go.

But I was saved. I got the smile instead. “You did very well, my dear.”

I am in love and I am so lost.