Comments | drdoug: A nice cup of tea

drdoug

A nice cup of tea

Nov 17, 2016 10:41

"Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea." - Sydney SmithGeorge Orwell, scourge of the right and of the wrong-headed left alike, fought the forces of repression with well-written essays, polemics and books. And even with actual guns bullets in Catalonia. Like most humans, he was ( Read more... )

tell-the-audience, patriotism, tea, posts-with-too-many-tags, mustnt-grumble, put-your-monkey-in-the-happy-place, ew, i-know-what-i-like, battery-acid, whimsy

Comments 13

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drdoug November 19 2016, 12:28:24 UTC

1) Yeah, I have a little tea infuser just like that for brewing loose tea in a mug, but haven't thought of using it in a pot. Will have a footle around, thanks. I know you can get pots with integral infuser thingummies, and may even have owned one at some point, but somehow they seem more bother than they're worth.

2) Aaaaaah! Well, if they didn't know they can't be blamed.

bethanthepurple November 19 2016, 06:59:36 UTC

Lovely :)

artremis November 19 2016, 12:45:12 UTC

Russian-influenced places like Estonia tend to have a culture of drinking tea black. I had to explain to step-niece that just saying "tea" in the UK would mean being given milk (sometimes already added which even as a milk-taker i'm not a fan of) and when we were in Tartu it was disconcerting to be charged an extra 25cents to get milk to go with the tea we'd already paid for ...

drdoug November 24 2016, 10:53:31 UTC

Oh wow, fascinating how tea-drinking cultures differ around the place. 25 cents extra for milk?!

resonant November 20 2016, 14:41:31 UTC

"had for about a pony" - not familiar with this term, and Google is not helpful.

The best electric kettles we get here in Canada are only 1500W, sadly. I was delighted when visiting Europe to see how fast kettles boiled there.

drdoug November 21 2016, 16:59:39 UTC

a pony

This is British slang for £25, more prevalent in London and the south east of England than elsewhere. I think it may have once been Cockney but I don't know for sure. I don't even know why a pony means twenty-five pounds. With Cockney rhyming slang there's a reason. So I've heard of 'pony' as rhyming slang for 'crap', from 'pony and trap' - as in, "Doug's explanations of slang are a bit pony". But I can't see a connection between that and £25. I'm pretty sure the £25 sense is older than 'crap', quite possibly much older - certainly pre-decimalisation, maybe pre-WW2 and perhaps even C19th.

There's also a monkey, which is £500, and a grand, which is £1,000. I would guess almost all socialised-British people would know what you meant by a grand, but pony and monkey are slightly more obscure, and it is perhaps bordering on wilfully unfair to use them in a context that might pick up an international audience. Sorry.

The best electric kettles we get here in Canada are only 1500W, sadlyYou're on 120 V in Canada, aren't you? That'll ( ... )

resonant November 21 2016, 18:03:36 UTC

We have odd names for our money here too. Our standard unit of currency is the loonie, because it has a loon on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loonie

skington November 21 2016, 19:20:55 UTC

And it's an absolute disgrace that the $2 coin isn't called the Doubloonie.

Thread 8

apostle_of_eris November 24 2016, 15:05:43 UTC

Forty years ago (things might be better today) I spent three months in Australia, and concluded that the Aussies have only four senses: no sense of taste at all. Which I attributed to their tea. I have sat in a kitchen chatting, had the host make a pot of tea, and seen people pour another cup from the pot which never had the leaves removed thirty or forty minutes later . . .