Tea then and now

Sipping tea at La Noisette’s (Franck’s and Louise’s) and watching the marché march by made a good break from writing. A little girl in a black handkerchief hem skirt with her light blond hair in a pony tail stopped at the table where the man sells spices and hand made soaps. Whatever she wanted was in a box and he knelt down to get it leaving his head at table length. He must have crawled because his head moved a foot left and a foot right, looking like a target in a shooting gallery.

Wednesdays are no school days, a nightmare for working parents.

One of the neighborhood dogs, knowing me as an easy touch, sat next to my foot. I lived up to his expectations as we shared my spice biscuit that Franck serves with tea.

I poured myself a second cup and remembered all the good teas in my life starting back when I lived on Wigglesworth Street. Tea after work was almost a ritual and we had a number of pots depending on mood: there was the lion faced one, the blue one with the clouds and others.

Then there were the teas at our neighbor Hiram’s. He often served cucumber sandwiches and one with pepper and other spices that he and his family had invented when money was tight. We were never sure which of his stories were real, but they were all interesting. Discussion of food was almost a rule as we bounced recipes back and forth.

He introduced us to Earl Grey and he mixed it with a gunpowder tea. When I told my neighbor Christina about the combination she tried Earl Grey with a smoky tea creating one more memory.

For close to a year, my girlfriend and I did monthly teas, adding special cakes or sandwiches and setting a nice table.

It was only after I moved to Europe that I realised that when some English talk about tea, they mean supper versus a cuppa to starve off hunger pains before dinner. Probably one of the most used phrases in British drama, even more than "I love you," is "I'll put the kettle on."

When it was time to go back to work, I brewed a second cup of tea. Writing is easier if a cup of tea is handy.