As a huge amount of you will know and possibly have experienced, us Brits love tea. It is a wonderful substance which for centuries we have fought wars over, done many a morally questionable thing and in the end, generally been quite obsessed with.
 
I realised just how much of a British thing tea and the way we treat tea is, when I spent the last year living in America. I realise that some of you, poor misguided fools that you are, bless you, believe that America has tea. America, in no way, shape or form has tea. The hot water with floating leaves in a bag that you serve is a travesty of naivety and tastes more foul than I could ever have imagined the sweet nectar that is tea to have tasted. I went to great lengths to find real, good, heart warming tea, the good stuff in short and eventually realised my only option was specially imported loose tea, mixed to my specific blend ideas. This of course, is a huge amount of hassle for an englishman who just wants a good cup of tea!
 
Tea, as my now extremely informed and quite wonderful long term (and sadly at the moment, long distance) misses once remarked, is like a loving hug in a mug. It raises the spirits more than coffee ever could and wraps itself around the heart as if it was the amber of life itself. And as I close this post, mug in hand I hope that you all find the joy of tea, it has become a small obsession of mine, I feel I become more and more of a traditional English gent by the day, something that perhaps is actually a positive thing.
 
Go! Drink Tea! And be merry!