Thursday 28 July 2011

a Tea Manifesto


Since the madness in and near Oslo occurred last week, it’s been hard to avoid details of the meticulous organisation of the murderer. We’ve even been shown his manifesto that he released explaining his reasons as well as his regimen of precautions and planning. My first thought was, ‘Wait, does everybody have a manifesto? Is this some sort of requirement of living in modern society?’

So I’ve been trying to devise my Tea Manifesto, and I need a little help. Truly. There’s the obvious stuff about loose-leaf tea rather than bagged. And the whole idea of not selling tea as Darjeeling if it wasn’t, in fact, grown in Darjeeling. Those are pretty straight forward. And at least fellow tea obsessives will in all likelihood be on board with such things. But what else? What else belongs in a Tea Manifesto?

Here’s the problem I found as I tried to come up with a list of platitudes and guidelines: it doesn’t seem like it’ll be easy for me to get terribly rigid about my beliefs here. Something about all this tea drinking that necessitates that I be a bit forgiving if someone doesn’t do things exactly as I expect or demand.

Maybe if it were a Whiskey Manifesto, I could get blustery and radical. And after a pot of coffee, I could imagine my heart-rate boiling and my thoughts turning to a bit of revolution fomenting. But here I’ve just finished a nice day of reading and walking in the park and then more reading. It was all fuelled by pot after pot of delicious tea.

First a bit of Assam Mangalam, then onto some Ceylon Nuwara. After being outside, I turned to a bit of first flush Snowview Darjeeling. It was so good, I infused it once more. There’s another possibility for my manifesto…don’t throw away leaves that’ve only been used once. Some tea really is excellent he second time around.

What do you think? What belongs in my Tea Manifesto? Need your help with this. Desperately. Unfortunately, I’m just a bit too measured in my rabble rousing.

3 comments:

  1. before any manifesto this escene seems to me essential, especialy after the Oslo catastrophe; in the tea drinkers peace is quite of the most important things isn' it?¿?¿

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oblIKd_I9_w

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thought the above comment was spam at first, but the link is actually to an interesting YouTube clip that I hadn't seen.

    Is this really the only comment regarding a Tea Manifesto? This is serious stuff people. I shouldn't be left alone to my own devices in developing such a document.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Welllll, the Tea Manifesto could strive for the natural pureness of tea and peaceful results that are usually derived from its use. Tea is generally a nicer drink. Coffee is a tool used to wake up; tea is a welcome break and soothes at any time.

    Anyway, I'm suggesting a soft approach without actually slamming the other less sophisticated liquids available, while mentioning the old soul types who generally partake in tea. You might add a bunch of exclamation points to beef up a particularly strong point or two though.

    ReplyDelete