Author: Robert Godden

I was in the office the other day of an organisation that works in the organic food sector.

In their kitchen is a huge bowl in which the staff can throw organic waste for composting.

I noticed a teab*g in the bowl.

Now, a reasonable reaction is turn over the bowl and a few chairs and scream loudly : “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE???”.

However, my enquiring mind got in first and thought “what about the staple?”.

There it was, bold as brass (although not actually brass), a staple holding the unnecessary piece of dirty string to the filthy paper-pillow of undrinkable (though organic-certified) tea.

I wondered if it was acceptable for metal to be part of organic composting.

Turns out that metal is invisible in the organic process. It’s not seen as organic, or not organic. It just is. It’s like steel is suddenly Buddha.

Does that seem right?

I can’t see any ethical justification for teab*gs: if you care about the planet, why would you use one. But the staple, I think, takes it to whole new level.

Why are we providing worms with steel, the result of thousands of years of human cleverness? On the day when armoured worms rise up, pointing their fannings-soaked steel-tipped mini-lances at our ankles and attempting to subvert our rightful place at the top of the food chain, we’ll all be sorry.

Well, we did it. A challenge was issued and four blogs were posted.

The four greatest male tea bloggers in the world* all took part in the challenge to create a non-fiction post using a title that some random person on the internet assigned to them, and the titles could only be drawn from the titles of Mills and Boon romance novels.

Here’s how it went down.

• Robert Godden (Lord Devotea) kicked off with Sugar Island, here on BoB.
• Geoffrey Norman (The Lazy Literatus) bent the rules with When the Smoke Clears: Rita, the Rebel Bride of the Recovery Room 
• Ken Mcbeth Knowles (Lahikmajoe) blogged over on his own space with “My Beautiful Heathen“.
• And Gary D Robson of Tea With Gary fame added The Dream and The Dancer.

And thus ends another challenge.

*The four greatest male tea bloggers in the world, according to our sample survey of four male tea bloggers

THIS IS PART OF THE BoB CHALLENGE, WHERE BEASTS ARE ASSIGNED ‘MILLS AND BOON’ BOOK TITLES AND FORCED AGAINST THEIR WILL TO WRITE A NON-FICTION POST WITH THAT TITLE.

Sugar Island?

As soon as I got given that title, I thought. “Yep, I know what I’ll write about: The Sugar Islands.

After all, there’s no actual place called Sugar Island.

OK, so I looked it up a while later, and there is, but it’s in Michigan. Probably one of the most boring states of the US. They might as well have let Canada have that one, no one would care.

And anyway, nothing important involving tea ever happened in the USA.

Well, there was this one thing, but it’s a long time ago and they’ve probably forgotten about it.

So, where was I? The Sugar Islands.

OK, lots of islands probably grow sugar. Even Australia grows sugar, and we are the biggest island there is.

But to me, Sugar Islands means the West Indies.

Growing up in Australia in the 1970s, I learnt very quickly that this is where a bunch of men came from who were elegant, dignified, had old fashioned names like “Garfield” and “Lancelot” and the most amazingly rich and beautiful speaking voices, had great sportsmanship, were very, very tall and were absolutely committed to killing people with a cricket ball by launching it at fearsome speeds from a great height.

Some people don’t think the West Indies is an accurate description of a real place. They point out that places like Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and the like are actual countries, and that the West Indies is just a cricket team. Well, screw them. This is my post, and if I choose to use a phrase that is redolent of historical colonialism, I shall, Don’t like it? Go read some other blog about how some single mother in Michigan can’t decide between two brands of infant formula.

So, did I mention The Fable of The Bees yet?

In 1705, the book “The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits” was published by Bernard Mandeville. It’s basically one poem “The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn’d Honest” and a few notes. Bernard considered himself an economist, and given that so far he’s got four friggin’ titles for essentially one short poem, he’s clearly not too far wrong.

Bernie was a riot.

Anyway the book was ignored for a few decades, and then became suddenly popular around 1730.

Here’s a bit of it for your, er,  enjoyment:

For many Thousand Bees were lost.
Hard’ned with Toils, and Exercise
They counted Ease it self a Vice;
Which so improved their Temperance;
That, to avoid Extravagance,
They flew into a hollow Tree,
Blest with Content and Honesty.

Basically, the point for Bernie M was never mind Psalm 137:1* and all that pleasing Jesus stuff, Christianity is bad for society. Consuming as many luxuries as you can is the new mantra. Eating humble pie might get you into heaven, but you eating partridge pie is far better for the local pie shop owner.

Like many others, he was championing consumption – not the Tuberculosis kind, although that was popular at the time as well. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we can afford new shoes.

And so, someone came up with the idea of putting sugar in tea.

Neat, hey? You thought I’d forgotten the sugar. Well, I hadn’t.

So,. why would a bunch of economists want people drinking tea with sugar?

Well, here’s a clue from Portcities website:

Some 2,108 slaving voyages set out from Bristol between 1698 and 1807. The number of voyages varied, from over 50 each year in the 1730s, to less than 8 a year in the 1800s

Ok, so the height of the slave trade is the 1730s, and these economists are exhorting the consumption of luxuries, including sugar, in the 1730s. Co-incidence? No!

Basically, slave ships from the UK left port, sailed for West Africa, collected up to 600 slaves, took them to the sugar plantations in the West Indies, sold the survivors, loaded up on sugar, and sailed back to Merry Olde England.

So, if not for tea and cakes – the two main uses of sugar at the time – there would have been a damn sight less than 2,108 slaving voyages from Bristol. Not to mention the dozen or so other ports involved.

It’s basically a circular argument. without the need for sugar, there’s no need for slaves, and therefore no need for slave ships.

It’s a trend we see to this day: Create the demand and create the wealth.

Now, the obvious question is this: If we know that slavery consists of robbing people of their liberty and transporting them thousands of miles away, treating them like animals and possessions simply to make money, didn’t people in the 1700s and thereabouts feel a bit guilty every time they tucked into some sweetened tea and a bit of cake?

I know it makes me a little uncomfortable. And by “a little uncomfortable”, I mean the “Why the hell aren’t we marching in the streets and burning down buildings?” kind of discomfort.

So, who was speaking up for the slaves? I guess they might have been relying on the clergy. Here’s what one of those guys said:

“The question at issue then is, whether or not six millions of British White people, to whom rum and sugar have become a sort of necessary luxury, should, contrary to the Law of Luxury, sacrifice the use of rum and sugar to the liberty of few thousand Black people from the wilds of Africa” – From “An Apology for Slavery; Or, Six Cogent Arguments Against the Immediate Abolition of the Slave-trade, by The Reverend Alexander Geddes, 1792

With all due respect to the Rev Geddes, he was a git. He’s a prime example of why people cast doubt on the self-serving smug pricks who think a friggin’ cassock or dog collar makes them virtuous. “Law of Luxury”, indeed. I’m surprised he didn’t add some “Commandments of Comfort”.

Sure, there were other members of the clergy who were against the slave trade, but the convenient narrative promulgated now is that the shopkeepers were the supporters of the slave-derived goods and the clergy were against, and it’s not so.

And indeed, here we come to a shopkeeper:

“…..Being Impressed with a sense of the unparalleled suffering of our fellow creatures, the African slaves in the West India Islands…..with an apprehension, that while I am dealer in that article, which appears to be principal support of the slave trade, I am encouraging slavery, I take this method of  informing my customer that I mean to discontinue selling the article of sugar when I have disposed of the stock  I have on hand, till I can procure it  through channels less contaminated, more unconnected with slavery, less polluted with human blood……” James Wright, A merchant of Haverhill, Suffolk, in an advertisement the General Evening Post, March 6th 1792

Good on you, James. I raise my teacup to you. Note that I don’t take sugar.

The West Indies may now be a region without slavery, and with vibrancy and art and love and food and family and politics and cricket – all the things that make life bearable – but it was born in blood and misery.

So, whenever you’re asked if you take sugar, spare a moment to remember what was taken in the name of sugar.

*Psalm 137:1 is “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.” Yes, you’ve been part of possibly the best obscure joke in a blog ever.

I created Beasts of Brewdom five years ago.

The idea was that it was to be a place for out-there tea blogging, specifically by male tea bloggers. Yes,  it’s a Gentleman’s  Club.

Not in the sense of hugely expensive meals and saucy goings-on, but as a counter to the overt feminisation of tea and tea-drinkers. A place to write silly and have fun at our own expense. Oh, and at the expense of everyone else.

At many an afternoon tea, I find myself the only male, or if there are others there, they look apologetic. It’s a female domain, it seems. And the Internet is much the same.

SIDEBAR: Are you a young man looking for female company and capable of maths? If so, why aren’t you attending as many afternoon teas as you can? 99% female and often sadly focused on champagne rather than tea. Stop reading now, Sonny, you have a social diary to plan.

So, I created this space for three bloggers: Geoff, Ken and myself to be louder, more obnoxious, more testosterone fuelled than usual. I mean more than is usual for us, because we’re not exactly Charles Atlas types. more ‘read an atlas’ types.

I look back over 2014 and there’s a few sarcastic poems by me, one article by Geoff, none by Ken and a few by latecomer Johnny Teacup. That’s a bit rubbish, isn’t it?

So, should we let it quietly die? I SAY “NAY” in a strident, yet not equine, way.

I’ve just updated the background to a sort of gentlemanly wood panelled affair, after the Tea Trade crash that caused many of the photos to disappear.

And I’m issuing a challenge. AND BECAUSE WE ARE RUGGED, TOUGH MEN*, it’s a CHALLENGE of CHALLENGES.

I call on Geoffrey Norman, Ken Macbeth Knowles, Johnny Teacup and myself to take on this challenge. Further more, if other men are named in the challenge, I call on them to man up, not slink away like a gelded ferret.

So, Dear Readers, CHALLENGE US: Here’s how it works!

1. Be the first to name one of the Beasts.
2. Challenge that beast to write a post on Beast of Brewdom
3. Select a title from this 92-page list of Mills and Boon Romance titles and assign it to them.
4. Hassle them every day until they wrote a non-fiction BoB post with that title..

Men who are not authorised to post here can contact me on Facebook/Twitter and I’ll make it happen.

Add your challenge to the comments. I’ll be adding one straight away.
Buckle on your sword belt, Beasts, and let’s take this challenge down.

*More or less

A cup needs an infuser, half full of leaf tea,

To make a reasonable brew, satisfactorily.

A teapot needs loose leaves all roaming free,

And a strainer, to perform spectacularly.

But what of those times, when the two ideas meet?

You enter a tea shop, fresh from the street,

And respond to the person whose task is to greet,

“A two-pot of Assam”, so malty and sweet.

And so it arrives, steam wafting up,

You grab the pot’s handle and manoeuvre the cup,

And the liquid’s not tan, but pale buttercup,

You whip off the lid for an infusory checkup

And there in the teapot’s cavernous inside,

You follow the chain that is tied to the side,

And see that the Assam that they did provide,

Is trapped in a tiny ball they’ve supplied.

“This won’t do! It’s unconscion-able”

You scream as you climb on top of the table,

“You’ve imprisoned my tea, it should be flable,*

But to twist, turn and brew, it’s completely unable”.

“I won’t stand for this! I’ll start a brawl!,

I’d get better tea in a boarding school hall,

This tiny contraption is no good at all,

The fine leaves are trapped in the tiniest ball!”

You must hope this behaviour is a lesson they learn,

What to do for tea-suppers whose pennies they earn,

Those customers whose goodwill they don’t wish to burn,

Who expect good results when they turn to the urn.

For all of the teapots that are served in these malls,

And corner cafés and family dining halls,

Issue dark liquor cascades, like Niagara Falls

When they encapsulate the joy of big balls.

Inspired by our latest tea purchase, a massive infuser ball.

*flable is an actual word meaning “Liable to be blown about”. I’m using it metaphorically. And with an air of desperation.