Storm In A Teacup

Tea. Jeremy Clarkson denounced the drinking of tea in "The Sunday Times" this week. Among the ills that tea has caused, in Clarkson's world, is the virtual collapse of the British banking system. Coffee is the beverage required by sound banking systems - just look at the Spanish.

Tea, you see, is not the first thing that comes to the Spanish mind when about to embark on a strenuous couple of hours of lolling around in a café nursing but one drink. Of course it isn't. The café is the same word as café (coffee). Why would you drink tea in an establishment that is named after coffee? This probably explains the tea that does get served. Because the Spanish don't get it where tea is concerned, they are extremely reluctant to provide it. They may well say that it is tea, but don't be fooled. Whatever that sachet with a piece of string contains, you can be confident that it isn't actually tea. The same applies to those places that bring along a cafetiere of tea. Why, one asks, would you put tea into something that is intended for coffee? But be that as it may. As with the sachet, you need to wait a good half an hour for whatever it is to "brew" and then press the plunger, by which time it is stone cold and when it is poured into milk becomes the colour of sand. Maybe that's it. Tea is sand.

Oddly enough though, if one gets local tea from a supermarket, it does actually taste and look like tea without also tasting or looking as though it has been mixed with engine oil as can be the case with hardcore British tea. Indeed something like the Eroski own-brand "té" is vastly preferable to a Tetley's tea-bag. Put that anywhere near water and the instant result is as if the whole plantation, earth included, is being forced down your throat. There are some who like their tea strong, northerners usually, but this can only be so that they want their jaws glued together with the industrial quantities of tannin that "flood out" of a Tetley's. But actually finding tea in its unadulterated state is becoming increasingly difficult in the supermarkets. Go to the admittedly not vast tea sections and there are pretend teas that require a dictionary to be ready to hand in order to translate whatever obscure herb they are made from. Try finding a pack of "té". So long as it isn't actually tea, the Spanish are quite happy to drink it.

The Spanish love-in with coffee is hard to explain insofar as one would not expect many to still be alive once they've had one. I'm sure it's the case that there is a rule that all bars and cafés must have a defibrillator on the premises as well as a hotline to a team of paramedics. I now always ask for a coffee "flojo" (weak) on the basis that it won't be weak but may not be so strong that someone will have to rifle through my wallet and look for my health card. I also often append the adjective "caliente" (hot) to the milk noun if it is café con leche I'm ordering. I have always believed that hot drinks should be just that - hot. If I wanted a cold drink, I'd order a water or a beer or the half-hour-to-vaguely-brew tea. But cold and coffee go together here; there is the rather odd phenomenon of having an expresso and a glass of ice, and pouring the former into the latter. I tried it once, and it is truly pointless. It is beyond the bounds of taste (good taste, that is) if then sugar is chucked in. Iced water with sugar. How can anyone justify that?

Of course there isn't any discussion when it comes to sugar. It just arrives, some of it in elaborate packaging that can fool you into believing they've been kind enough to give you a freebie of a triangle of Toblerone. Except it wouldn't be free and nor is the sugar, even if, as is most likely, they've not actually paid for it. No, the cost of the coffee is priced according to the designer wedge-shaped sugar packet. I never have sugar, and yet there it always is. Do they offer a discount for returning the sugar? Do they heck. That's why they don't get a tip.


GALES AND BENEFIT SEEKING
More gales hit during Sunday; the second lot in a few days. The worst of the weather affected the south, but the winds were still powerful in the north, though with only intermittent rain. Someone here had a wall go over. The strength of the gusts was at times quite frightening; God knows how bad it was in the south. Then yesterday it started fine, which, for the massive dole queue at the unemployment office in Puerto Alcúdia, must have been good news, until that is, it started to rain. All those people having to stand and wait in the elements; there is something not quite right with this. I thought it was just foreigners who were treated with disrespect by having to queue under a boiling sun or in the rain at the foreign affairs building in Palma. Not so; everyone is treated similarly. There has got to be a better way.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Great stuff - Underworld, "Born Slippy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlLWFa1b1Bc). Today's title - various songs with this title, but what about the one by a "lucky" Brummie pop group of the '60s and '70s?

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