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Michael Plant

7/5/06

> Melinda,
>
> A great article, thanks for linking it.
>
> There's something beautiful about the counter-Starbucks culture
> that's kicking in here. Now that Starbucks/CafeNero/etc. have hauled
> coffee (or, at least, mainstream coffee) out into the utter wasteland
> of McDonalds tastelessness, it's perhaps inevitable that there is a
> counter-movement to rediscovering the delicacy and elegance of
> afternoon tea. Though, of course, it never went away. It's merely
> having the "poker treatment", in which high-profile individuals are
> claiming allegiance to it.
>
>
> My favourite paragraph from the article:
>
> With the afternoon tea ritual, things are different. Tea is grown up.
> It is slow and non-careerist and English. It is Alan Bennett and
> Morrissey to coffee's Jessica Simpson. "Coffee doesn't have a ritual
> attached to it, it doesn't have any of the lovely, 'Shall I be mother?'
> stuff associated with it," says style-watcher Peter York, who is
> partial to extended tea and millefueille afternoon teas at the Wolseley
> restaurant, along from the Ritz in Piccadilly. "With coffee you want to
> rush it. With tea you want to sit, you want the accompaniments, you
> want to enjoy the long-drawn-outness, the community, the sharing out of
> a pot, the rather childish, 'I'll halve my cake, if you halve yours'."
>
>
> Toodlepip,
>
> Hobbes\

Hi Hobbes!

Your logic is inarguable, except for the coffee: When
I drank coffee, I used a French press and a little
electric spice chopper/powderer. I carefully chose my
little coffee scoop, usually a wooden one made in Haiti,
and the mug I intended to use, usually one I had thrown
myself or one that had been thrown by a friend. I
arranged things on the counter, not to mention myself,
just right. And then, upon completion, I took my mug
to the livingroom to the coffee chair where I would
peruse the morning paper, coffee mug carefully placed
on the old crude milking stool that served as coffee table.
Lots of ritual, personal, and slowly developed over time.

But, alas, no more coffee for me. With tea of course I
get great pleasure out of doing things right, but I get far
greater pleasure out of doing it wrong; that is, allowing
my personal predilections to impinge upon the classic
styles I've taken so long to unlearn.

Michael