The Withby teashop: Bandtravels/camp -07

I have not had the pleasure of being a fan of Sting for all to many years. In fact, I was at best in my confirmation year before I understood that giants do really walk on earth. One of my favourites was, and still is, "Englishman in New York". For those of you who are not familiar with the text, the key sentence to why Sting is mentioned in this post, is:

I don't drink coffee I take tea my dear

At the age of fifteen I felt an urge to be able to quote this line from time to time. To do that, I had two tasks to complete. First, I had to make sure I did not start drinking coffee. Not an overall difficult task, as I had no strong feelings for mixing water and burned beans (Although they do smell wonderful). The other was to start drinking tea. Now that was somewhat more of a challenge. God knows I've tried many different dishes through the years. Snails, snakes, dog and even elephant, I believe. But starting to drink tea? That was a new one. Anyway, I did it, and the result was beyond anything I had expected. The project ended up in with a passion for tea in general, and Twinings Earl Grey in particular. I love the hot drink, and none of my friends would ever expect not to be served tea at a visit to the Cowie Residence. Andreas, for example, regards my informal "teaparties" (Quotation, but I've started using the word too) as a must for any of his friends visiting Egersund. Tea is no longer just a drink. It is a way of life.

It was with my little passion in mind that I entered a small shop in Withby last week. It was a tea- and coffee-shop, and I was determined to walk out with some examples of English tea at it's finest. First, I just looked at the boxes, but then I found out that I could buy in loose weight. Suddenly I was asking about that and that tea, and "Please, could I have a smell at that one?". It felt great. This was my kind of shopping! But after just a few different sorts (All too many of the teas were fruity. Passion fruit, mango, apple and the rest did not sound right), I settled for Kenyan High Mountain and the blasting green tea named Imperial Gunpowder. Suddenly I had a reason to get back to beautiful Egerøy Island. Surprisingly, I'd rather stay for some more time in England than we did. The tea could wait. But hey, you cannot dream of what might have been, but rather concentrate on the future. At one point my time in England was at it's end - for this time. I was back home with to small bags of tea in my suitcase. Time had come to put the kettle on.

I write this post partly on request from Simon, a rather unique fellow with a strong liking for not only tea, but also more powerful drinks. He is also the only person I've met who wears a "Yoda's Intergalactic Tour"-t-shirt. Simon asked for a comment on my new experiences with Taylors of Harrogate (That was the brand of the tea), and this is it. He probably had not thought about it as being a theme for a longer text, as he had no knowledge of my digital hobby, but well, I love writing longer text about rather strange themes. I started with the Kenyan High Mountain. I put in all too much, and the result was that the water needed little time to extract just the right amount of flavour from the leaves. A nice thing indeed. Dad and I had it for our evening meal, and both were well satisfied. The Imperial Gunpowder was not not used before the day after. Andreas came to visit, and as always, tea was naturally served. Unlike me, Andreas was well accustomed to the taste of this green tea, and commented that he normally used to teaspoons for one cup of tea. I used four for one litre, but let the water extract flavour as long as it was need to put the taste to it. And so was the time for tasting. My excitement was at a definite peak of the day. Would I spit fire? Would I make loud bangs when I talked? Or would Tom Cruise finally come out of the closet? (As in the direct meaning. I've never doubted that Tom Cruise was anything but heterosexual. There are limits of how much shit homosexual people should have to put up with. Cruise is a good actor, but a Scientologist, nonetheless). No such things happened. It was a nice tea, and I congratulated myself for the good timing. A long conversation waited, and all in all, the day was a good one.

That was it for the day. And if anyone needs a talk, please, give me a call. I'll put the kettle on right away.