Particulates

[CharlesHarris]

Ajax,

When I describe the BOL as having moved "outside the moderate damage radius" (from DC), I'm not kidding. I grew up an Army brat whilst my Dad was serving at the engineer proving grounds at Ft. Belvoir. During the Cuban Missile Crisis my brother, Mum and I all expected to be blasted to atoms and we prepared a bomb shelter in the cellar and stocked it suitably.

The cottage in which I now live was built in the 1970s, about 70 miles west of DC with three ridges of mountains between it and the I495 beltway around Washington, in the region called the Potomac Highlands, not far from Berkeley Springs.

As for tea, I've not had a proppa cuppa ever from a teabag. Me Sainted Mother would be appalled! I am blessed to have a regular supply of quality loose tea, send from a missionary friend I help support, who returns an ample Christmas parcel every year direct from the plantation in which it is grown in Galle.

For fellow Americans who may be reading here or others who are ignorant or simply unfamiliar, I feel obligated to tell the tea story as Mum taught us. I would appreciate any additions or correction of any errors of fact if my memory is fuzzy...

The tea which I am blessed to be regularly gifted goes by the botanical name Camellia sinensis, which originates from Galle, Sri Lanka. It is a very fine, low-grown (under 1000 feet), broken leaf tea that produces a dark cup with a good body that is mellow and brisk. It holds up well to the addition of milk (or even Admiralty rum after the second "dog watch").

Here in the US it is commonly used as a base often adulterated to lend a hint of authenticity to otherwise abominable blended teas. In its pure form it is of the common type favored for chai in India or for your favorite breakfast teas in England. I am told on good authority by my Brit expat neighbor that it is the very same tea served in the mess on ships of the British Royal Navy.

Tea leaves need to be treated like beer, in airtight containers protected from light and heat. I transfer loose tea from its plastic shrink-wrapped 500-gram bricks into half-pint glass jars with new canning lids as soon as I receive it. A quantity of these, stacked in an airtight, gasketed M2A1 cal. .50 military ammunition can are well protected and keep fresh for many years. Indeed my Mum brought over with her to the states when she emigrated from England multiple tins saved from WW2-era rations. The last of it we used at home was still excellent during the Reagan years.

Mum was a 10:00 and 2:30 tea break person; pre-heat the earthen pot, infuse with a cozy cover, wait, then pour kind. Her version of getting off of her feet, and getting a pick-me-up. She insisted that milk, if used, be added to the cup first, before pouring the tea, so as to avoid thermal shock to the bone China.

As a young lad I was taught that Tea was Britain’s secret weapon during WW2 and one of its most visible symbols of national unity. Mum told stories of how tea was the social binding force during the London Blitz where, night after night, fires blazed from bombed buildings, and she and her neighbours huddled in the underground tunnels while air raid sirens were a daily threnody.

As all you know very well, tea was and still is powerful both symbolically and practically. Churchill is reputed to have called tea more important than ammunition. He ordered that all sailors on Royal Navy ships have unlimited tea. Its perceived value in boosting morale not just in Britain is illustrated by the Royal Air Force dropping 75,000 tea bombs in a single night over the occupied Netherlands. Each contained wooden boxes with several hundred one ounce sachets of tea from the Dutch East Indies and was marked “The Netherlands will rise again. Chins up.”

Every one of the 20 million Red Cross packages sent to Allied prisoners of war contained a quarter-pound package of Twinings.

Tea helps restore at least a semblance of calm and normality during times of turbulence and danger. Its essence is that it is warm and comforting. It also provided an egalitarian sharing space in a society of rigid class distinctions. In the air raids, local Air Raid Wardens and Auxiliaries, mostly women, served tea to anyone, forming huddles, bringing strangers together, and providing a center for medical help.

Tea also played a critical role in the British Army, with historians attributing at least part of its success in maintaining espirt and morale during the almost never-ending military campaigns, many of them small colonial policing actions. One of the keys that distinguished it from every other European fighting force was that its embedding or tea in its routines greatly reduced the reliance on alcohol to calm troops as they prepared for battle, relax them at its end and keep them sober and alert while they sat around waiting.

Coffee serves a similar function in the US armed forces, but lacks the rituals associated with tea in Britain.