(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Wow. Fandom secrets brings us wildly inaccurate, classist, tea wank.

It reminded me of my headcanon about Picard, though (I always forget that I do actually have canon about Picard, though he's the only TNG character, other than Miles and Worf* that I care enough to do this for). Having been puzzled for ages as to why a supposed Frenchman is so damned British, I concluded that it's of a wider piece with his attitude to his family, and his flight from his responsibilities to the family business. I bet he cultivated raging Anglophilia as a kid, just to differentiate himself. No coffee, just tea (imported from England, not a French blend), much to his parents' irritation. Shakespeare ("classical French drama is lifeless!"). And then, of course, running away to sea to be a sailor joining Starfleet.

I bet he was a really annoying teenager, and probably a bit of a hipster.


* Who I always basically think of as DS9 people, even though this doesn't make much sense for Worf. But I never felt his colleagues on the Enterprise appreciated him properly.

Comments

[ankaret]

My favourite kind of wildly inaccurate, classist wank! I knew this was going to be gold from the moment the OP declared that poor people couldn't be 'classy'.

Also, I only know how to make tea because occasionally I need to make it for my mother, but I have to say that I had never considered adding eggnog.

[oursin]

Classy is sticking your little finger out while drinking tea, eny fule no.

[ankaret]

Yeah, I think adding eggnog is all the way up into 'ritzy'.

[legionseagle]

I think adding egg-nog is well over the borderline into eccentric.

[tree_and_leaf]

And of course you leave the bag in the tea! (Why do Americans do that? If nothing else, surely it leads to embarrassing choking-on-teabags moments?)

[legionseagle]

I leave the bag in for fruit tea because otherwise it isn't strong enough.

[el_staplador]

I do the same. Also, you can still see the teabag in there (as opposed to normal tea, when the milk has turned it opaque).

[tree_and_leaf]

I can follow the logic there, but with ordinary black tea...? Although I suppose it might be the same problem, given that the people I know who leave the bag in black tea also seem to be a bit wobbly on the importance of boiling water.

[caulkhead]

There's a whole thread in the post you linked to about how boiling water for tea is WRONG! WRONG!! WRONG!!!

Ugh.

[kindkit]

I haven't found that thread yet (there are so many!) but chiming in as an amateur tea snob: boiling water is wrong for certain kinds of tea, such as green tea and white tea. It will scald the leaves and ruin the flavor.

[tree_and_leaf]

I didn't see that. Unless it was the one about not using boiling water for green tea, but they're right about that...

[antisoppist]

I gave up drinking tea outside my own flat in Finland because cafes would put teabags in a coffee percolator jug, drip non-boiling water onto them for some time and then leave the jug there on a hotplate with the teabags in to stew for several hours.

[kerravonsen]

(shudders)

[tree_and_leaf]

I had an argument with a particularly pretentious cafe in Freiburg, who would bring you hot water (it wasn't boiling by the time it had got to my table, of course), and a basket of leaves. So I asked them to take it away and bring me a cup of tea made with boiling water, and they patronisingly explained that then it would be impossible for me to time the infusion correctly (see menu for the correct infusing time). I replied that it wouldn't infuse properly if the water wasn't hot enough* anyway, and they did bring me a proper cup, but with obvious disapproval.

I didn't go back. And I stuck to coffee in future.

* It was black tea, not the kind of tea that needs cooler water.

[aella_irene]

My family are occasionally forced to do that with teapots, but that is why we have a hot water jug, as inherited from my grandparents, for that side of the family like water that has been mildly exposed to the teabag.

I don't do that with cups (or didn't, when I used teabags) because then you just end up with tannin stains on your teeth, and drinking the strong bitter ends.

[tree_and_leaf]

I've come across Advocaat flavoured tea in Germany (only in the sense that I saw it on the shelf; it sounded foul). But the Germans put very odd things in tea....

[forthwritten]

I first came across Desperados in Germany. Tequila mixed with beer, whyyyyyyyy.

Whyyyy???

[caulkhead]

I came across Guiness with Fanta and Kirsch in Germany. In something that claimed to be an Irish pub.

Re: Whyyyy???

[forthwritten]

UPSETTING.

I bet it was bad Guinness too, the kind that tastes like licking a peat bog.

The worse bit about Desperados (and there were many, many bits) was that it was actually bottled as such D:

[naraht]

My theory has always been that Picard was sent to boarding school in the UK at a young age. But your theory makes sense too. I suppose they could both be true.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, your theory could work, too.

[oursin]

That was a real shoot-yourself-in-the-foot, your vaunted knowledge is actually VAST IGGERANCE moment.

[tree_and_leaf]

It's the best example of that I've seen for some time, really....

[forthwritten]

Oh wow, that's beautiful. My day has been made.

[tree_and_leaf]

Isn't it amazing?

[el_staplador]

*puts the kettle on for a nice cup of Co-op Red Label with oh-God-I-hope-the-milk's-OK. Or, as we call it, TEA*

Oh, internet.

[grlnamedlucifer]

*wipes away tear* That was a beautiful wank, thank you for sharing it. Who knew that my not being a fan of the Earl Grey I've tried secretly meant that I was fancy and rich! ~The more you know~.

[kindkit]

I will admit (and I said this anonymously on the thread) that I do wince a little bit when someone has a character drink Earl Grey to show they're a tea connoisseur. Not that there's anything wrong with Earl Grey (some blends are good, some are terrible) but there's also nothing rare or unusual about it. It's like suggesting your character is an art connoisseur because they like Van Gogh's Starry Night.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, that was you? It's a fair point - but that's not got anything to do with class, per se (as you know)...

[kindkit]

No, nothing at all. It's just my own Earl Grey-related fanfic peeve, which I shared because . . . I dunno, f!s is a bit of a free-for-all?

There were a whole lot of weird and interesting conflations in the original secret. Not just "Earl Grey drinker = poor person," which is weird in itself, but Britishness (by which presumably they mean Englishness) = "classy" = tea drinking. My understanding (but I'm US-ian, so I may be misinformed) is that nowadays a certain kind of "my sophistication, let me show you it" English person drinks only coffee and looks down on tea as a proles' drink. It's a false sophistication, because of course tea isn't limited to supermarket tea bags any more than coffee is only instant Nescafé, but I've been told it exists.

[nineveh_uk]

I don't drink either tea or coffee*, but I've never come across people who don't drink tea because they look down on it, but still drink coffee. My experience is that British people who don't like one, don't like the other, because the predominant taste and sensation is the same, though there may be one that they find easier to drink if necessary (as opposed to having a mild preference, but drinking both).

*Unless very, very drunk and needing to pretend not to be, in which case I will force some coffee down my protesting gullet. And hot chocolate if it is absolutely freezing, the chocolate is boiling hot, and I must warm up. And even then I leave half the cup.

[ankaret]

I drink coffee but not tea! But not because I look down on tea - I just like the taste of coffee better. I pretty much only drink tea in times of personal or national crisis.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, in moments like that it has to be tea, regardless of what you actually like....

[serriadh]

I do think among a certain sort of social group (not sure whether I'd call it a 'class' or not) of... metropolitan pretentiousness, coffee snobbery has certainly taken over from tea snobbery, though most people will drink both. You know, the sort of 'oh, I only drink espresso from my own [brand] machine, or from this one tiny little Italian cafe in Islington, Starbucks is just heated sawdust painted brown*, etc. etc.'

* They are right about this bit.

[tree_and_leaf]

They are right about this bit.

Annoying, isn't it? Though I actually have a shameful weakness for Starbuck's gingerbread lattes.

It's not coffee, of course, it's a sugary, caffeinated hot drink. I still like it, though.

[serriadh]

I enjoy quite a lot of Starbuck's drinks, on the basis that they're hot, caffeinated and usually very sugary. But they're not "coffee", you're right. I feel the same about instant coffee, actually, which I do really like, but which barely tastes like coffee to me. (It's a bit like 'strawberry flavour' in eg powdered milkshakes, which I also like, but tastes nothing like real strawberries.)

[legionseagle]

I drink coffee but not tea, but not for reasons of snobbery (incidentally, my parents - postman and cleaner - did drink Earl Grey tea and were considered "stuck up" for doing it by people from the same social background) but because I can't stand drinks with milk in (the sight of milky tea makes me want to throw up and as for the taste -!) and basic British tea without milk is godawful. Very weak Earl Grey or Lapsang or green tea of various sorts are therefore the only possible options if I do drink tea, and they aren't entirely appealing.

[tree_and_leaf]

The awfulness of basic tea without milk means that I generally only drink green tea, or the more expensive kind of black that can be drunk with milk, because as I'm catered, because I always end up chucking away milk if I do buy it.

[legionseagle]

Do you suppose the OP of the original wank was attempting a socio-political analysis of milk consumption in the lower socio-economic groupings of British society all along?

Though given the most obtrusively tea-drinking fandom at present seems to be Sherlock* and fandom writers have a positive obsession with John buying milk both the issues of class** and the issues of what sort of tea is drinkable without milk don't seem all that relevant.

*and if I never hear the word "cuppa" in a fanfic again it'll be too soon.
**well, apart from in those peculiar fics which appear to believe "grammar school boy, University of London educated doctor and officer in the British army" somehow adds up to "semi-literate peasant" in the British class system

[tree_and_leaf]

I can't imagine Sherlock or John saying 'cuppa' under any circumstances. I suppose Lestrade might, while being a bluff copper to put people off their guard...

[legionseagle]

It's such a weird word, I can't imagine anyone saying it unless they were self-consciously in character as someone from a '70s/80s sitcom (Rigsby in Rising Damp, for example) - or, alternatively, a Conservative politician trying for man-of-the-people cred (Hague, not Cameron type Tory, obv.)

[kindkit]

I should correct myself to add that any kind of connoisseurship does have something to do with class, since it assumes that you have been exposed to and can afford non-supermarket tea or whatever.

[nineveh_uk]

*applauds your mention of Yorkshire tea* I don't drink tea, but that is the kind I don't drink ;-) Actually, I once packed Taylor's coffee for a day in their factory. The next day I turned up, packed for half-an-hour, turned round, and got the train back to York, having just enough cash in my pocket for a ticket and not to have to wait for the minibus. I hated it*, and I wanted to go to my friend's leaving party. Since one of the other people packing coffee was a 30-ish woman who was also an Iraqi refugee and doctor, I was well aware that I was lucky to have this option, but there was still no way I was staying.

*Only because it was boring - the conditions were good for factory work, and the canteen served Betty's food at low prices.

[taelle]

Thanks for the link, it was entertaining. ... poor USAians, it looks like it's hard to get normal tea there (also, how is tea related to classiness? Me, I can't live without tea, but my main requirements are not tasting like hay and making a cup of hot black sweet drink)

[el_staplador]

Yes - tea is required for yr average Briton to function, but tea is not SRS BSNS. In fact, if this hypothetical fic goes into any more detail than how many sugars the character takes, you've automatically marked them as a bit weird.

(All this would make a really interesting Britpicking post, I think...)

[legionseagle]

Oh, God, she said in a voice of doom, if we start discussing tea the next thing will be washing up and the zombie apocalypse will be upon us.

[tree_and_leaf]

No, icing comes before the apocalypse. But it would be inevitable either way!

[legionseagle]

"Is it proper to drink Earl Grey with frosted cakes, and what's the best way of getting the tannin stains out of bone china afterwards?"

[tree_and_leaf]

That's it. The perfect Brit-picking storm.

The internet would never recover.