On Tea: A more personal note

When I was writing about all the different teas I have tucked away in my cupboard, I realised that part of the reason I particularly savour all the different flavours is that each one was introduced to me by a different person, and when I drink it, I am reminded of them.  Tea is the stuff of long conversations with friends around the kitchen table.  It is the stuff of family visits accompanied by milk tart or Assorted Bakers biscuits.  It is served at important functions, like graduation teas or weddings, or even funerals.  You could drink it on your work or tea break while you sit and have a gossip, or, like me in my solitary working state, I enjoy it as it helps the words come out better.

In this way, knowing how someone takes their tea can sometimes be a measure of how well you know them, because if they have been invited into your home, there is a strong chance you will have made tea for them frequently.  Everyone has their own tea-drinking quirks. I drink all my tea black (after my mother) with the tea bag still in (at this, my mother thinks I am crazy) but Zwe and his sister take theirs with milk, sugar and not only the teabag still in, but the spoon as well.  My father has complicated routine that involved warming up the cup with some plain hot water first, and then using white sugar for tea and brown sugar for coffee (and never the twain shall meet).  I know I haven't speant much time with my school friends for a while because I have forgotten how they take their tea when I used to know.  This makes me a little sad.

I never used to be much of a tea drinker.  The only time I drank tea growing up was when I stayed with my grandmother. The taste of milky, sweet Earl Grey will forever remind me of her neat little cottage in Waterfall Retirement Village.  She no longer baked but always made sure there was something sweet for her first granddaughters to eat.

At school, I think the only tea I really took notice of was Paddock tea, mainly because my friend Carmen's father was a tea farmer and as a result, Paddock tea was held in wide esteem in my humble part of the world.  Sadly, no one in Paddock makes tea anymore, so if you come across any lingering boxes of the stuff, you should snap it up quickly.

Plain rooibos tea was my procrastination of choice when I was in residence at Rhodes University.  Breakfast or lunch or supper would be finished, but if you were still nursing a mug of rooibos from the dining hall stash, then you didn't have to go back to your room and get back to work.  Living in the annexe, I would drink the decadent Woolworths Green Tea (everything from Woolworths Food seems decadent if you live in a town without one.  Oh yes, Johannesburg readers, they do exist) one of my housemates would bring from Johannesburg, or I would make my own hot drink with honey and lemon.  Grahamstown is also bitterly cold in winter, and tea was always a sustaining cordial to get you through the winter (well, that and copious amounts of alcohol.  You would be amazed what you can get away with wearing out in winter when some alcohol has warmed you up first).

Twinings tea is all because of my mother and our English holiday at the end of 2009.  We shopped until my aunt was horrified that we had come all the way to London to shop (the horror! to be fair to us, I did arrive two days before Christmas and I hadn't done any of my Christmas shopping...)  England in winter is just so cold and dark that a flavoured tea can be the last thing between you and full-blown madness.

It is from 2010 onwards that my tea obsession has really taken a solid form.  Zwe's sister Zama introduced me to Buchu tea (on one of our annual Summer get-fit drives) and her friend Thabi stayed at the flat one night and brought her own tea (something every sensible tea lover should do).  That was when I discovered the marvel that is instant, extra-strong Honey and Ginger Tea.  I have sustained myself on that tea when it is late and everyone else is still partying and my alcohol jersey has worn off.

The Chai Tea is something that brings all sorts of people together.  Zwe's mother likes it, as does my sister who is my supplier of the delicious stuff.  (In some ways, she is my drug dealer, as sugar is my drug of choice any day)  She worked in a wonderful little health shop called "The Mustard Seed" in Grahamstown that is the only place I have ever found it that sells it.  She and I often let each other know when we are drinking it and it is definitely something us sisters share.  I also introduced it to my old friend Christy (we've been friends a whole decade now, whoopee!) the last time we had one of those delicious catch-ups, and she really enjoyed it too.

Some catch-ups in my world occur not in my home, but in the English Department.  My one-woman-wonder friend Eva who is currently completing her Phd (along with working three or four other jobs) invited me for tea in the Phd room when I was too broke to go out for some, and we sat and sipped our way through two cups of Laager Green Rooibos, Citrus and Ginger tea.  Ah bliss.

The Five Roses Orange and Lemon teas was also introduced to me by friends, Malcolm and his wife Jess when Gwynlyn (another school friend) and I were staying at their newly-wed home in Secunda.  It was a revitalising visit for both of us, we speant a lot of time sitting at their table or in their living room just chatting about everything under the sun (and by everything I mean everything, as these three are comprised of two engineers and a geologist) and down time with distant friends is better than a weekend at a spa.

My next tea adventure (I think) will be into leaf tea.  I have a teapot and a strainer, and the redoubtable Mrs. Spiller gave me leaf tea for Christmas in two gorgeous boxes: Assam tea and Caramel Rooibos.  Perhaps, like my adopted grandmother, Granny Pam, I will learn to tell fortunes in the tea leaves...

Ebony and Ivory

The theme song of my boyfriend and mine is“Ebony and Ivory”. We usually sing the first few bits together (not in harmony, alas as my white ears are rather deficient at that skill*) and move our hands together in slow motion so that our hands meet and our fingers intertwine. For those not blessed with knowledge of this eighties optimistic kitsch, the words go like this:

"Ebony" (sung by Zwe, aforesaid boyfriend)

"And Ivory" (sung by me, rather ineptly)

"Live together in perfect harmony" (sung together, of course)

This is funny (to us, if no one else) because I am white and Zwe is black, though I always prefer to refer to myself as“faintly pink”. I mean, “white” isn’t even a colour (technically) and it makes me annoyed to have to tick the “white”box on forms rather than the box that says “other”. Maybe I have actually always wanted to be Gonzo from the incorrigible Muppet crew, who is known as a “whatever”. Which just goes to show that Muppet Shows and the latest excellent Muppets film (called, classically, The Muppets) actually has really intelligent things to say about everything.

Like these excellent (Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Concords (just had to throw that out there)) *rhyming* lyrics from the opening piece:

Life's a happy song,

When there's someone by your side to sing along.

Which, as this blog post attests, is just too true.

*Zwe to Clea on reading this bit: “Not all black people are good at music, you racist white”.

Free Jazz

Last night, Zwe took me to this great little corner restaurant in Melville, Jozi called "Wish!". It was not great for the awe-inspiring food (it was good, but not amazing), nor the decor, which is actually really pleasant and suitably artsy. They have abstract paintings that are awash with colour on the walls, and red chairs that look like they come from an alternate time that never actually existed. If that makes sense. And our waiter was more than a little distracted as a famous DJ was sitting at the table behind us.
The reason it was such a gorgeous evening was because there was a live jazz band playing there that you could listen to...for free. Not just any jazz band, a jazz band consisting of Marcus Wyatt on trumpet and fugal horn, Afrika Mkhize on keyboard, someone called Clement Benny on drums and Thembi Nkosi on a huge, gleaming double bass (in my next life, I will be a bassist. No question). Benny is a drummer who seems to make the rhythm section melodic, and Mkhize is prone to flights of incredible, fragile beauty on the piano. Nkosi thrilled me down to my toes with his masterful handling of his bass throughout, and Wyatt is, well, there's a reason he is such a famous musician.

They played a standard or two, but their real strength last night seemed to lie in the music they had worked on together. After a particular passage, several listeners (including my own dear boyfriend) actually shouted with joy.
Being able to sit a few feet away and listen to such great music is something we all experience too rarely in these days of widespread recordings and such easy access to the music of almost any band one could wish to hear. Seeing a band live in such an intimate setting is really exciting. You can hear the scatting Mkhize sometimes does to accompany his playing, and Benny's zen-like expression that seems to be completely unaware but is actually taking in all the subtleties of his fellow musicians. You can tell when someone has lost their place because of the sheepish smile that creeps over their face, and you could watch Wyatt pacing and soloing nonchalantly from the door, or taking his place as frontman.
The four players achieved excellent balance last night, not something I have often been fortunate enough to hear. Each note of each instrument contributed to a seething Jazz whole (jazz music can never simply be "whole": that implies some kind of completeness. Jazz is never complete) and I enjoyed being able to hear the bass in particular, which is often drowned out in live performances.
I was particularly pleased to see that there is free jazz at "Wish!" every Wednesday night. Whether or not next Wednesday brings the same excellent quartet or another band, I am looking forward to returning.

the blog about nothing

Doing nothing is actually not as fun as it sounds. Although perhaps a lot of people would not agree to begin with that doing nothing is not fun. To them I would say it is actually, sometimes. But definitely not most of the time.

After that intentionally convoluted beginning (I hope it is amusingly and not annoyingly so) I should place my philosophising in context. I managed a bookstore in Pretoria for a few months earlier this year, but after deciding that selling my soul to the store (that is actually a book title btw) was not worth it (particularly not for teenage vampire romance novels that have been flogged to death) I resigned and half-heartedly began to search for another job. It was a peculiar time because I knew I only wanted a job until the end of November as I wanted to be home for Christmas and then resume my full-time student vibes. So I would be looking for a job where someone only wanted me for three months and not over the busiest retail time of the year. Ummm...

So I chilled and had the kind of holiday I haven't had since I was fifteen. I woke up late, read some of the things I've been wanting to read for years but never got the chance to, including non-literature books about why the English colonised Africa and not the other way around. I listened to Talk Radio 702 and impressed people at dinner parties because I knew all sorts of bits of information people would never expect me to know.

I watched Oprah religiously. Watching Oprah also enables one to have powerful information at one's fingertips. I watched her show on the North and South Korea divide (and now look what happened! That Oprah woman is a prophet, I swear), another one about how African Americans are 50% more likely to develop diabetes because of Soul Food and another charming one of her interviewing Dolly Parton. Now previously, my knowledge of Dolly probably would not even extend to remembering that she sang "Islands in the Stream" (a song we danced to in our high school musical production of "Footloose"). Now, I know that she has the most wonderful, self-deprecating humour, and that she is warm and funny and down-to earth. I never saw the Twilight episode of Opera and missed out on the ubiquitous Robert Pattison and Kristin Stewart. Oh. Damn.

I also played pool (badly, it must be said despite Tumi, Zwe and Zam's best efforts to teach me. My Port Shepstone friends will no doubt smile understandingly, remembering all their kind-hearted (practically saintly) efforts to teach me decent tennis or ping-pong) and read all the odd articles in the Mail and Guardian online. I even joined as a commentator because I was so incensed by someone's disgusting racist comment that no one else picked up on. Needless to say, I felt very insignificant because my angry comment was completely passed over.

I gymed too. Zumba, swimming, weight-training, treadmill and toning classes. I felt like a housewife arriving for the 9 am class and then going home to have a shower and then out again to do the shopping. And home again for some reading before Oprah.

I must here give all due credit to Zam who let me drive everywhere in her car to practise my driving skills, and gymed and chilled with me all the time. And let me indulge my passion for frozen yogurt from "Memory Lane" in Hatfield. Anyone who goes to Pretoria should get one. Never mind the Union buildings: go and enjoy the sweet and exquisite coldness.

Well now I'm working again (in a place I enjoy) and have next to no time for any of my nothing days. But although I am missing Zwe and Zam a lot, I am being productive in other ways and feeling more energised and purposeful than I have in months.

And I manage to stay up until all hours writing. So doing nothing is fun. But doing something as well as fitting in all those great nothing activities is funner. Here's to the working holiday!
(and as always, to better grammar).