Tea Leaves

I was reading a novel by Dirk Bogarde the other day. I am a bit fancy like that. One of the characters, who was supposed to be some sort of simpleton, asked “When does it stop being tea and become tea leaves?”

This is the sort of bunkum that always gets me going.

When it is loose and dry, it’s tea. When you put it into a pot (using a teaspoon) it is still tea.

After you have poured the boiling water over it and let it draw, the infusion becomes the tea and what was the tea becomes tea leaves. If you don’t strain it properly you end up with tea leaves in your tea and when you wash the pot out you have to be careful to get all of the tea leaves out. Having already ditched any remaining tea.

Tea to tea leaves, leaving tea. It’s brilliant, like some kind of magic. A secular transubstantiation. It makes me think that there might be something in the reading of tea leaves to predict the future or whatever they do.

Anyway, I could think deeply about this for hours but I chose just to steal it and try to get laughs with it instead. Naturally I intended to pass it off as my own observation. Dirk Bogarde was in movies and stuff, he doesn’t need any more credit. The man was a matinee idol, back when that meant slicked hair and smoking jackets so he can, with respect, get stuffed.

The very first time I tried it out, rather than admiring me for my quirky perceptions, my audient said;

“Hmm. I had never thought of that. It’s the same with coffee and coffee grounds, isn’t it.”

And he was quite right too. The whole thing is eerily similar. Getting the coffee, putting it into the coffee maker (oddly, with a tablespoon- I think you use coffee spoons for measuring out your life instead) then, Presto! You have created a hot drink and some nasty grounds that get all over the sink and spew copiously from any splits in your bin liner.

I had been turning the tea question over in what passes for my mind for days without even thinking of that. He barely paused for breath.

I will never acknowledge that anyone is smarter than I am, particularly in matters that are utterly trivial. Clearly I am going to have to change the rules again so that I can maintain my carefully manipulated self image.

Before I do that, though, I will spend a few weeks mulling over the strange connection between infused hot drinks and the names of their component parts. I am fizzing at the bunghole.