Just as we were getting used to these ubiquitous yellow tea packets…it turns out the teas are colour coded! This in light of today’s revealing of a black tea in a navy blue packet. Oh, we could sing!
We love a good black tea. Herbal teas are fine when options are limited; we even have one or two we particularly like. We wouldn’t turn up our noses at green or robins either. Whites and Oolongs are lovely for late afternoon and evening, but for a good, old-fashioned afternoon tea with biscuits we favour a black tea. That this one says it’s Breakfast Blend on the tin has deterred us not a jot from sitting down to a pot at gone three of a December afternoon.
This is a lovely breakfast tea with Ceylon notes that add delicate, subtle flavour. It’s worth noting though that we’re among those people who, de facto, take black tea with milk, which will necessarily alter it’s taste. But in this instance we hardly think the effect was adverse. It’s a classic tea and its classic for a reason.
To go with it, here’s a classic poem. To early for Hardy, you say? Never say we! It wouldn’t be Chorister At Home does Advent and Tea without a healthy dose of Hardy! Besides, we mentioned this one yesterday. So settle down to a cup of your favourite tea, luxuriate in it while it steeps, and have a read. See if you find this Hardy and yesterday’s Lawrence as metrically similar as we do.
The Voice
Thomas Hardy
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
Chorister at Home 