Earl Grey and Sympathy

I’m very particular about tea.  

Now I acknowledge that I’m hardly alone in this – ceremonies and rituals abound around the world on how to make this drink and are caught up in various national identities, especially in Asian countries.  The making of tea can be profoundly spiritual and even religious in some cultures, with it being an important part of Vietnamese weddings for example.  For me, however, my tea ceremony is divorced from the metaphysical.  It is one of warming the pot, swirling and jiggling it, and of a precise sequence of additions that is simply a formalized way of making tea to my own taste – with a twist.  The twist is that how I do it reminds me of something.  That, wherever I go – and carry my tea with me – I am British.

It’s axiomatic that a nice hot cup of tea sustained the entire British nation through world wars and other paroxysms ancient and modern.  High tea and the accoutrements that go with it - sparkling, Sheffield steel cutlery, refined cucumber sandwiches, Devonshire cream and the essential scones - are part of who we are, of who I am. Or who we were at least.  With a cup of tea in my hand I used to be entirely sure of my heritage, Ancestry DNA not required thank you.  And still, when I hold one now, the warm aromas and stringent flavours remind me of that certainty even as modern reality intrudes more pervasively with every year that passes.

It used to be great being British – and everyone else knew it.  Our language and literature were dominant [and still are, frankly – anyone can produce a quote from Shakespeare (1567-1616) but have a go thinking of one from Proust (1871-1922)].  But now, with notable exceptions obviously, we are mostly reduced to literature as Newspeak realized in 280 characters and perfected by Donald “Covfefe” Trump.  The British were the sine qua non of the modern world – from the countenance divine of democracy in the capital of ¾ of the globe to the depths of the industrial revolution in the dark, satanic mills of the grim North.  Now, in days long past those when Tony Blair was still the future, the former is failing and flailing around the globe, Western societies riven right down the middle between liberal and conservative, left and right.  Meanwhile the latter may have destroyed our biosphere and destabilised our planetary home for good. 

It used to be cool being British.  Affectionate as I am about the tweedy, elbow-patched Oxford don affecting a Sherlockian pipe and mannerisms, in the latter half of the twentieth century we evolved into something much more pop-culture-portable around the world.  Examples proliferate:  pre-sordid Hugh Grant bumbling his way into Julia Roberts’ heart, the upstairs downstairs soap of Downtown Abbey, the evangelist-bothering Harry Potter (no relation) and the ostensibly German yet obviously British uber-villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard.  Likewise see the preposterous idea that Captain Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek the Next Generation could ever be French of all things…Being British was a delicious combination of insouciance and gravitas unmatched by any other nationality.

We had the best music.  The Beatles, Oasis etc. being my local heroes of course (there were bands who originated outside of the North of England but I was never clear on who they were) were rooted in soil I recognised. Now it’s all so American (even when it’s not actually).  We have gone from John, Paul, Mick and Keith to the accented, punctuated and hyphenated:  Beyoncé, Will.I.Am and Jay-Z (which I understand is pronounced ‘zee’ not ‘zed’).  We had the best universities.  Oxbridge alumni were the Gods of thought and progress but are now challenged by new Titans from the new world with Harvard habitually topping the world rankings these days.

We had the best sense of quirkiness and humour.  With my apologies the present paragraph will be incomprehensible to the non-British person, being something of a paean to my youth.  I vividly remember riding my bike – 2 gears – up the gentle slopes of Pex hill in Widnes, Cheshire and stretching my Dr Who fan-boy muscles enacting my own stories in the cavernous quarry there that, due to the BBC’s - shall we say - restrained budgets for the programme, resembled any number of alien worlds on which the Doctor found himself imperilled (compare and contrast to the vacuum-packed perfection of contemporary Star Trek and other foreign-type shows); listening on my trannie (transistor radio, nothing LBGTQ related) to John Peel sessions introducing the musical icons of the future – amongst an astonishing parade of dross admittedly; guiltily giggling to Viz comic which was busy keeping the grand tradition of saucy seaside postcards going (I could reference the commedia dell’arte tradition but how pompous – how British – would that be?); eating overcooked vegetables that deliquesce on contact with cutlery (and chip butties that gladden hearts while thickening their aortas while meat pies gave indigestion that would have made a visit from the angel of death seem like a sweet release); plum-accented mathematician and sexual ethicist – now there’s a British combination for you – Bertrand Russell stuffing God into the memory hole and not finding much separating ground on that position from the panjandrums of the Church of (post-Christian) England.  We also produced comedies that changed society:  Mr. Humphries being constantly free and helping usher in a new state of tolerance – the first openly gay central character in any TV show?; the faux-accented Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced “Bouquet”) sisypheanly climbing – and exposing – the still prevalent slippery social class pole; and supremely the mighty, indomitable, redoubtable Fletch kicking against the pricks and futility of directionless punishment in Porridge – in my opinion still the finest sit-com in history with its (I would argue) uniquely British admixture of gallows mirth and grim menace.

It used to be inclusive being British.  With our tea warming the melting pot of Empire we were open to influences from around the globe.  We once were as Pericles of Athens famously declaimed in his funeral oration as reported by Thucydides: “Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own”.  Even latterly we were primarily European, if from a slight remove, and I could plausibly use English and British as synonyms.  Now Little England may be back for good.  Brexit has fractured families and identities and creeping devolution raises the spectre of the break-up of the most perfect union.  

But fin de siècle self-pity is not my message here, despite appearances to the contrary.  No, whilst I indeed may be in mourning for what my idea of Britishness was in a manner of speaking – and lately, post- Brexit, I’ve gone quickly through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression finally reaching a quiet acceptance – I have also realised that what has been lost is not as important as what I still carry with me.  Which is everything I’ve just briefly rehearsed with you.  I disagree with Alan Lightman when he says in his elegiac Einstein's Dreams “The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.”  Memories of who we were, both individually and collectively, inform us, ground us and are companions with us on our journey though life.  And thus I remain, glad of who I was and am, and really quite parched.

So – fancy a cuppa?

"Years from now, when you speak of this, and you will, be kind," (Tea and Sympathy – Robert Anderson, play 1953)