tea

There are few nicer things than sitting up in bed, drinking strong tea, and reading.

Nowadays, people resort to all kinds of activities in order to calm themselves after a stressful event: performing yoga poses in a sauna, leaping off bridges while tied to a bungee, killing imaginary zombies with imaginary weapons, and so forth. But in Miss Penelope Lumley's day, it was universally understood that there is nothing like a nice cup of tea to settle one's nerves in the aftermath of an adventure- a practice many would find well worth reviving.

Have tea, might write,_ Laura returned.

One Bagatelle, and I__l raise you a novel,_ Megan had tweeted back.__riting for tea? Now that would have been a solution for the British empire,_ Laura returned.__riting for me,_ Megan had typed.____l write you a tea fortune.___o deal. I want a novel. September sounds good.

The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.

A commission of haberdashers could alone have reported whatthe rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong generalresemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf.Her shawl looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion.

My second meeting with Vincent Starrett began on a cool Sunday afternoon in May of 1962. After a short interlude, he returned from the kitchen precariously balancing a large cup of tea on a very small saucer. It was the largest tea cup I had ever seen, large enough to startle, I am inclined to suspect, even the Mad Hatter in 'Alice in Wonderland.

(Malory, unhopeful: "I don't suppose you have any tea?" Jesse: "DO YOU WANT EARL GREY OR DARJEELING?" Malory: "Oh, sweet heavens!")

I would never advise shooing away a good idea.

When things are good, it is because we remember a time when they were not. When there was pain. But now the pain is gone, so things are __ood_. When we hurt, it is because we recall a time when we did not. When there was no pain. But now we suffer, so things are __ad_. The tiger sipped from the cup, peering at the boy over the rim. Stars swirled in its eyes. __ood. Bad. The cup holds both.

I take a few quick sips. "This is really good." And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting."This is from Grand Auntie," my mother explains. "She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound.""You're kidding." I take another sip. It tastes even better.

A great idea should always be left to steep like loose tea leaves in a teapot for a while to make sure that the tea will be strong enough and that the idea truly is a great one.

Tea drinking is a liturgy of comfort, and we partake of it everywhere in the world. It__ a ceremony of simplicity, nourishment for both the nomads in foreign teahouses and homebodies in their beds.

Tea is just an excuse.i am drinking this sunset, this evening.and you.

Captain Harcourt-Bruce was not only dashing, handsome, and brave, he was also rather romantic. The reappearance of magic in England thrilled him immensely. He was a great reader of the more exciting sort of history - and his head was full of ancient battles in which the English were outnumbered by the French and doomed to die, when all at once would be heard the sound of strange, unearthly music, and upon a hilltop would appear the Raven King in his tall, black helmet with it's mantling of raven-feathers streaming in the wind; he would gallop down the hillside on his tall, black horse with a hundred human knights and a hundred fairy knights at his back, and he would defeat the French by magic.That was Captain Harcourt-Bruce's idea of a magician. That was the sort of thing which he now expected to see reproduced on every battlefield on the Continent. So when he saw Mr Norrell in his drawing-room in Hanoversquare, and after he had sat and watched Mr Norrell peevishly complain to his footman, first that the cream in his tea was too creamy, and next that it was too watery - well, I shall not surprize you when I say he was somewhat disappointed. In fact he was so downcast by the whole undertaking that Admiral Paycocke, a bluff old gentleman, felt rather sorry for him and only had the heart to laugh at him and tease him very moderately about it.

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?And is there honey still for tea?

A cup of tea is all I need to keep working.

Imagine a delicious glass of summer iced tea.Take a long cool sip. Listen to the ice crackle and clink.Is the glass part full or part empty?Take another sip.And now?