From the smoky flavoured tea of Grandma Methuen
to the more sophisticated tastes of Nanny Jones and the builders' tea of my
mother, tea, rather than coffee has played a major part in my life.
Granny Methuen had one of those blacken
miniature ranges in her "couch", the sitting room next to the kitchen. The wood she used was never quite fully dry
or seasoned so it would always smoke.
The cottage is still there on the outskirts of the Forest of Dean.
I remember Granddad showing us the vegetable
garden almost every time we visited. We
did that a lot, as we lived only two hundred yards or so down the lane. The garden was always overshadowed for me by
the visits to Granny's little smoky sitting room and the tea.
Every time I went there, the tea was strong and
had the permanent flavour of wood smoke.
As babies, the tea was "watered down" with milk, but later, when
I was in my late teens and I was given lap sang souchong for the first time, the
memories it invoked were of her and certain smoky parlour and tea
eaten with cake and, if we were lucky, rich tea biscuits. I say lucky, the cake had to be dipped in the
tea because it would remove all the moisture from your mouth if you didn't!
I was quite an adventurous child and I was only
four or five when for some reason I decided I wanted to play with my cousins
whose house was about two miles away.
So, choosing my moment, I sneaked away.
As I passed Granny's house I remembered to rush past in case she spotted
me (after all don't all Granny's have superpowers like in the comics? After all
they have the uncanny ability of knowing when you've been bad, so I assumed she
could see everything, even through two walls of Pembroke stone).
One of our neighbours tattled though, and by
the time I had reached my cousins' house, my older teenage sister was already
on her way to collect me. The adventure
was worth it though. Soon after my
mother was telling the tale at Granny's house, and in the corner, I was
drinking smoky tea.
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