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Michael Plant

Michael /5/06

> 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
>
>

Hobbes,
Aha, you were quoting the article.
I was thinking those words were yours.
Sorry. Still stand by my response, though.
Michael