Day by day

Other people’s words about … tea

I am the sole tea-abstainer in my family. I think they regard this as a baffling perversion. To me, tea tastes like dried lawn-clippings, diluted leaf mould, watered-down compost mixed with a dash of bovine bodily fluid. I have never been able to stomach it.

From ‘I Am, I Am, I Am
by Maggie O’Farrell

I loved this quote from Maggie O’Farrell. My sister, an inveterate coffee-drinker, feels much the same as O’Farrell, I think: she wrinkles her nose in disgust at any suggestion of tea. She, in contrast to O’Farrell’s family members, is baffled by my love of the stuff.

Each to her own, right? I would find it harder to give up my one or two pots of tea per day than I would to give up chocolate or cake or wine. Tea provides me with what amounts to both a daily treat and a ritual, and it gives me, each day, a small moment (often temporary but still cherished) of sanity and solace.

I would write more, but it’s 9.30 in the morning and the kettle is on the stove waiting for me to make my daily pot of tea …

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