A nice cup of tea

Numerous celebrities have died so far this year. One of them was the last of the PG Tips chimps. I always preferred Typhoo Tea to PG Tips, yet as a child I persuaded my parents (and relatives) to buy PG tea for the whole of the 1960s just for the Brooke Bond collector cards contained within each pack.

In a recent book about Shakespeare (he died this year too…400 years ago though) there was the interesting information that until the discovery of Tea in the C18th and its eventual widespread adoption as the drink of choice for us here in the UK, the majority of the population went about their day pretty well continuously drunk. Alcohol such as Ale/Beer and later, Gin etc was far “safer” to consume than water straight from a well/stream/river. It didn’t seem to occur to people of the C17th and earlier to make the connection that perhaps they should also filter and boil water from rivers or wells before consumption too.