4 September 2009

Tea Party

Greetings,

Fashion is a funny thing, isn't it?

And I'm not just referring to the way dress hems rise and fall, platform shoes come and go and man-bags make a valiant attempt at resurrection every few years. No, I'm thinking about fashions in all areas of life here ...

Who can forget the domestic architectural ABBA style of the 80s and 90s? (ABBA? Oh, you know ... All Bricks and Bloody Arches.)

Or the nouvelle cuisine of the 70s, which left you peering at your plate in a vain search for solid food and which has now reappeared in the form of 'foam' that accompanies both sweet and savoury dishes.

Or the rapidly changing fads in the eating establishments themselves.

When I was a girl (please don't be like that ... Manners ... remember?) dining out was confined to steak and eggs or a nice mixed grill at the local Greek caf (usually called the Paragon and decorated with timber booths and pictures of the Acropolis) or to the Chinese caf (called the Ming Something and not decorated at all. At least the one we frequented in the early 60s wasn't. There were fluorescent lights and Laminex tables and lino on the floor, but the Chicken Chow Mein or Prawn Chop Suey was just so exotic, we didn't mind.)

This particular Chinese café was our first experience of takeaway food, too. I can vividly remember my Dad and I sitting in the brightly lit premises (with me as often as not in my pyjamas and dressing gown) waiting our turn to hand over the saucepan we'd brought from home to be filled with the aforementioned Chicken Chow Mein or Prawn Chop Suey (the only two dishes we ever ordered).

How times change!

I've told you before about the many eateries in our neck of the woods, but today, our interest lies with the ones that have vanished.

A couple of years ago, we fell victim to a new eating fad ... High Tea. And tea shops (more often calling themselves Tea Shoppes) sprang up in arcades, along the waterfront, in shopping malls and even in back streets. For a while it seemed that wherever we ventured on our fair shores, we were confronted by visions of Ladies Taking Tea. There they were, as we peeked through the lace curtains at the front of the shop (sorry Shoppe), sitting at tables bedecked with embroidered cloths, sipping tea from flowery tea cups, choosing petits fours from the two- (or sometimes three-) tiered cake stand as their hostess poured tea from a ... tea pot? Tea-pot? Or perhaps teapot?

Separate words, two hyphenated words or one word? Oh, the choices!

We all know that hyphens are used to join a prefix to a noun or adjective, as in pro-government and anti-nuclear, and to distinguish between pairs of words such as:

Re-cover (cover again) recover (regain)

Re-bound (bound again) Rebound (recoil)

Re-form (form again) Reform (remove abuse)

But did you realise that the reason you use a hyphen in words such as taxi-ing, pen-name, re-enter and tail-light, is to avoid awkward juxtapositions of the same letters? I know our 'Murkin cousins have a quaint way of referring to their co-workers as coworkers, which always makes me think of milkshakes for some reason, and the little loves prefer co-operation to be cooperation, which makes me think of chooks ... But that's obviously just me.

Hyphens are also commonly used to show the close association of ideas: a hard-working man, a long-felt want.

They help to avoid ambiguity -- in the previous example, the man could work hard without being a hard man. And a long-felt want is very different from a long, felt ... anything really.

In the following classic example, used by teachers around the world to illustrate the difference, a sweet-shop assistant is quite different from a sweet, shop assistant.

Compound words have their own little evolutionary pattern, moving from separation, through hyphenation to integration, as seen in our dear friend tea pot, tea-pot and teapot.

An interesting observation here is that while there's no set-in-stone rule governing the use of hyphens, there are differences in how they're used in different English-speaking countries: in Britain (and the colonies), the fashion is to leave the expressions as two separate words (joined with a hyphen to show the association -- if it's a close one), while American writers favour single compound words e.g. arm chair in Britain, but armchair across the Pond.

So where have all the Ladies and their tea-pots gone? Well may you ask, because a recent survey of the district revealed nary a one remaining.

The lace curtains, the white doilies, the pretty cups and plates have all vanished faster than a plate of cream cakes at a school boys' picnic. Now the premises are home to hairdressing salons, dress shops or (ultimate insult) in one instance a Coffee House! (Note that these are no longer coffee shops, but full Houses.) And here we have the solution to our mystery, boys and girls, because the Flavour of the Month is now Coffee!

But you can't just pop into one of these establishments and ask for a coffee. Now, you have to make a political, moral and economic decision before you get your shaking hands around a soothing cup. You're asked to choose between rainforest friendly, eco-grown, local or fair trade; to decide if you want your coffee from Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador, Colombia, Jamaica, Kenya or that new plantation just up the road.

Aargh!

I just wanna cuppa coffee ...

But perhaps not from this place:

The driver pulled up to the drive-through of a fast-food restaurant and ordered coffee. He asked the clerk to put some ice cubes into the cup so that he could drink the cool coffee quickly. At the window, there was a delay.

Finally, a teen-aged girl came to the window looking frustrated. "I'm having a problem," she announced, "the ice keeps melting."

And did you hear about the time when a blonde, a brunette, a redhead, a vicar, a priest, a rabbi, two giraffes and a duck, a farmer, a lawyer, an accountant, a Mexican, an Indian, a Chinaman, an Irishman, an Englishman, an American and a Scotsman walked into a Tea Shop?

The waitress said, "Hang on a minute, is this some sort of joke?"

This week's Little Something Extra has more than you ever knew you didn't know about tea ...

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This week's quiz:

For all you tea-drinkers out there ... Match 'em up:

souchong, tisane, Darjeeling, pekoe, oolong, billy, lapsang souchong, gongfu, Earl Grey, chai

1. tea grown in mountainous area around the Himalayas, of India; generally black teas are well known for their crisp astringency

2. term for large leaf teas derived from the third and fourth leaf of the tea shoot

3. meaning performed with care, this typically refers to a style of brewing with many repeated short infusions of leaf in a miniature pot

4. form of tea characterised by lighter brews and larger leaf styles. This tea is typically understood as a lightly fermented tea, between green and black tea on a continuum

5. derived from baihao, the white hairs of the new buds on the tea shrub, this term currently refers to the smaller-size grade of whole leaf teas

6. black tea that is scented with the essential oil of bergamot, a citrus

7. teas produced from the leaves of plants other than the tea plant, herbal tea 

8. spiced tea, a strong black tea infused with milk, sugar and spices

9. Chinese black tea which is fired (dried) over a smoky (pine wood) fire to impart its characteristic smoky flavour

10. Australian term referring to tin pot with wire handle to suspend over an open fire in which tea is boiled

A man walked up to a vending machine, put in a coin, and pressed the button labelled, "Coffee, double cream, sugar."

No cup appeared. Then two nozzles went into action, one sending forth coffee, the other cream.

After the proper amounts had gone down the drain where the cup should have been, the machine turned off. "Now that's real automation," the man exclaimed. "This thing even drinks it for you!"

Last week's quiz:

anent, eftsoons, fain, swoopstake, abaft, yoicks, enow, avaunt, usward, froward

1. expression of surprise or excitement - YOICKS

2. toward us - USWARD

3. in an indiscriminate manner - SWOOPSTAKE

4. enough - ENOW

5. turned away; self-willed; unreasonable; perverse; adverse - FROWARD

6. soon after - EFTSOONS

7. away; hence - AVAUNT

8. toward or at the stern of a ship; further aft - ABAFT

9. about; concerning - ANENT

10.happy; inclined; pleased - FAIN

And this next piece is sort of tea/coffee related ... distantly:

Four Catholic ladies were having coffee. The first Catholic woman said to her friends, "My son is a priest. When he walks into a room, everyone calls him "Father."

The second Catholic woman chirped up, "My son is a bishop. Whenever he walks into a room, people call him "Your Grace."

Not to be outdone, the third Catholic mother said, "My son is a cardinal. Whenever he walks into a room, people say, "Your Eminence."

Since the fourth Catholic woman said nothing, the first three women gave her a subtle, "Well?"

So she replied, "My son is a gorgeous, 6' 2", hard-bodied dancer. When he walks into a room, people say "Oh my God!"

A Little Something Extra

All about tea in China here

The History of tea from people who should know what they're on about ... the British Tea Council here

The art of the Japanese Tea Ceremony here

And the history here

Word of the week: Pomology (n) the science that deals with fruits and fruit growing.

If you'd listened in French lessons at school, you'd have been able to guess this one ... la pomme (apple ... remember?)

And before you ask how this fits in with our discussion about tea, it doesn't ... But coffee is a fruit.

Oxymoron of the week: Iced tea

Since the Romans didn't have tea or coffee (but drank only water, wine and beer) this week's Latin phrase will just have to relate to wine ...

Vinum et musica laetificant cor

[WEE-noom ET moo-SEE-kah ley-tee-FEE-kahnt KOHR]