Visiting some nice folks the other day, comes the question do you like white tea? Why yes I do. A full box is produced with compliments of the house, not to their taste. Marvellous, says I, and I bring it along home thinking i’ll have some here while I do a bit of evening work. Workspace prepared, tea made, I take a sip. Oh dear. No wonder they didn’t like it, it’s got so much stuff added that you can’t taste the tea. This is successfully approaching vile.
I don’t know about anyone else, but for me taste is associated with memory. So I am suddenly reminded of a tour of Britain. I think I told you about the experience, that was the one where we had all our gear stolen and I got my guitars back. Well, we were a couple of weeks into the tour and I was pretty interested in encountering a decent cup of coffee. Things have certainly changed since then, but at the time British culture had not yet successfully embraced the concept of coffee. So then you can imagine my delight on entering a highway reststop cafe and spying a large squarish metal container behind the counter, apparently wonder of wonders dispensing coffee.
Sadly, in my delight I lost sight of one of the basic rules of the road. Do not accept coffee dispensed from anything involving right angles.
I got my beverage in a take out cup, happily made my way back to the car, perched the coffee in an appropriate position for sipping while driving just like at home, and headed off down the motorway anticipating joy when it would be safe to do so. A few miles on I finally cracked the lid and took a sip. It was awful. No, I mean perfectly dreadful, substitute bits of unwashed gravel for medium ground dark roast and you’ll start to get the idea. I had another sip. No, it really is that bad.
But, you see, I didn’t leave it at that. No, we were travelling much of the length of the island that day, so for the next hour or so I kept trying that coffee, just to see whether it had improved. No it hadn’t. I couldn’t make myself stop and throw it out, wasn’t really safe to do so anyway, but neither could I just leave it be. So I watched myself do this little dance for most of the trip, laughing all the while. In between making faces at the taste, of course.
So last night’s white tea experience was a little like that. Mind you, I must be growing up. It only took about twenty minutes before I pitched the drink.
I wonder what I want to be now that I’m grown up.