A reason to switch from tea to coffee??

An unusual title for a post on such a blog as this, you might think. However, I was just at a talk given by someone at my work (he has been with the Department for 20 years and was giving us a few edited highlights) and he mentioned the reasons for his own switch from tea to coffee some years ago.

This was back in the good ol’ days when there was a tea lady who came around every day at 10.30 and brought you your tea or coffee and biscuits and cake. Yes, those were the days and how things have changed since then (for the worse, naturally).

Anyway, this gentleman at my work was explaining that he always used to have tea at these times. This preference changed when one day he had to pop into the tea room to organise some tea and coffee for a meeting, and saw the tea lady straining the tea… through an old stocking. He only drank coffee from that day on.

I’m not sure whether the stocking was also previously used and worn by this tea lady (I would hope not, and I imagine also that tea leaves might be difficult to extract from it for subsequent wear). Still, it has set me to wondering what might deter me from drinking a given cup of tea.

I don’t think a stocking filter would, unless it actually was a used, freshly-worn stocking - that would be gross (conceptually, even if it didn’t affect the taste of the tea). A clean, unused stocking, though, would not bother me much. And certainly, there is nothing that would deter me from drinking tea for the rest of my life!