Long before I'd had any thoughts about the importance of ceremony, I understood the nature of a cup of tea. As a child in a very small flat with two argumentative parents, a cup of tea - one of the normal eight to ten cups a day - meant that they were getting on or making up: nobody suggested tea in the middle of a fight or in the sullen unresolved aftermath. Tea was recuperative, it made things better, or it celebrated uneventfulness, emphasising that nothing was wrong. And making tea was the only thing I was allowed to do in the kitchen - for some reason my left-handedness was not considered an impossible handicap when wielding a boiling kettle, as it was when handling knives, saucepans or plates - so I felt not only that I participated in those cherished moments of family peace but was often enough their high priestess. There were plenty of hateful meals, but never, as I recall (though God knows I can recall wrong), a miserable cup of tea.

LRB 19 June 2003 | PDF Download