I know that many believe that with the Global Warming crisis becoming ever more concerning, presuming various presidents don’t pre-empt our climatic destruction by plunging us in World War, and whilst the expressions ‘eleventh hour’ and ‘thirteenth hour’ are often being referred to, I would like to propose a new term to describe human behaviour when on the brink of disaster.
My wife and
I are virtually addictive tea-drinkers*, preferring that produced by a brand (I
imagine we have to avoid direct advertising) associated with a large region in
the northeast of England, which according to the locals at least is
particularly favoured by God but where curiously not one single tea plantation
exists. Nevertheless, we love their tea.
We now live
in France, so the Linked-to-a-Northern-Area Tea is harder to come by. It is
possible but we’d have to remortgage our house in order to be able to afford more
than a few days supply. Fortunately, we have some marvellous family and friends
who bring over supplies whenever they traverse the Channel, a little like the
Red Cross supplying POWs with gratefully received essentials during the war. Even
when sending us birthday cards or Christmas cards they often squeeze in a few
valuable tea bags.
In spite of
these kindnesses, we still often run short of bags to make a brew. What I have
noticed then is that these last few bags (and especially the very last one) but
only these teabags, are heavily recycled. That last teabag must have
every single molecule of tea giving flavour squeezed out of it, to the extent
that we possibly manage to split said molecules into smaller tea flavoured
components.**
This never
happens to the other teabags. If we extracted as much caffeine and the associated
components out of all the other teabags in the box, we could conceivably keep
brewing brews until the end of the century. When the box is full, or even half
full, we happily use each teabag once, or twice at the most, seemingly
forgetting the trauma of our last Make-that-teabag-last-forever nightmare
before we gained new supplies and acting as though our supplies are endless. If
we recycled each bag twice, we could probably survive comfortably between each
box.
But we don’t.
We never learn. Sooner or later we’ll be practising advanced calisthenics
squashing a teaspoon into a teabag as hard as we can against the edge of a mug.
I know we’re hopeless, but I don’t think we’re alone in our tendency to such frantic
last minute madness.
Hence my
suggestion for a term to describe our behaviour on the brink of disaster. Namely
The Last Teabag Theory of Human Survival.
Now, when
finally all of us, barring those wearing orange caps perhaps, can see that we
need to save the planet, some last-minute action seems to be taking place. I’m intrigued
by the work going into ‘Carbon Capture’. That seems such a Last Teabag idea. I can’t
help myself think of it as ingenious cheating. ‘We’ve created a problem. But
let’s not solve the actual problem. Let’s find a way of dealing with the
problem caused by the problem.’ Well, if it plays a part in saving us that’s
fantastic but it could also be seen as an excuse for allowing ‘business as
usual’. Also development of clean forms of producing energy seems to be
accelerating.
But will we
be able to save the planet before the teabag runs out?
*If some
method of taking it in intravenously existed, we would at least look into it.
**I have
considered writing to the purveyors of Linked-to-a-Northern-Area Tea and
suggesting that they include an extra-large teabag at the bottom of each box
that could be mashed and mangled for even longer than a standard bag to support
all those of us that work The Last Teabags to the limits of its endurance.
3 comments:
When you say recycling, do you mean hanging them out to dry, or just pile them in up in a saucer for later ? I've tried the standard version of those Up North tea bags, and found them slightly meh, little different to other everyday tea bags. The deluxe variety tends to be outside my comfort zone pricewise. Asda Everyday ( top marks in Which review ) for me.
With you on squeezing the bag against the side of the cup, for the instant hit.
An interesting consideration of teabags - and more.
Love this!
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