David Charters: A good cup of tea is always to be savoured

Apr 29 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

ALTHOUGH his head’s dome now shines shyly under the sun of summer holidays, his spectacles are rarely free from the dust of the basement archives from which he plucks curled photographs and crumbling words, telling of the way we were then.

Sometimes, softly, in moments of deep concentration, he will put one glass to an eye, better to study the peculiar details of a picture.

And he shakes his head and smiles to himself. Ah, yes, it was another time.

Indeed, the world has changed since he was a boy, pale in his cool, blue jeans, following the gaudy adventures of heroes in tuppeny comics – “Pow, biff, take that, you scoundrel!”.

Strange sounds came from the windows of little houses. Hey, man, can you hear those thimbled fingers dancing out a crazy rhythm on mum’s washboard?

And those photographs tucked in brown envelopes fill him with memories of how on Saturdays his shoes would join 140,000 other feet stepping towards Everton’s Goodison Park.

But some things don’t change. A good cup of tea is always to be savoured. Nowadays, in the yawning mornings, when colleagues at their desks are still stretching into the demands of work and rubbing their eyes over those ceaselessly humming computers, he strides across the office, head bowed in thought, a mug in each hand.

His quest is the kettle in the alcove, symbol of his religious fervour, and, when the steam is high, he pours the holy water onto the teabags like a priest and waits. Into the alcove, like an imp in the garden, pops his younger colleague, offering a spoon with which to stir the brew.

The man looks at him with slow, but growing, authority. “You must never bruise the tea,” he says. Suitably chastened, the young one also waits for the gentle ritual of lifting the bags, when the boiling water has darkened to the shade of a newly polished Welsh dresser.

Now imagine what would have happened to us all if tea prepared with such religious dedication had been served to the disciples at the Last Supper instead of wine. The most profound moment of faith celebrated in the Christian liturgy would have been very different.

Even so, the notion of communicants being asked if they take milk and sugar – one lump or two? – is enough to startle the soul. Devotees of the pot will argue until their final puff that it’s impossible to make a decent cuppa with a teabag, but let us step gingerly into the modern world and accept that the perforated bags are here to stay.

All the same, wouldn’t you expect the chap who appreciates tea to be inclined to offer his seat on the train to someone more deserving? I am not sure the same could be said of a coffee drinker, but that is an argument for another time.

Anyway, with the breakfast tea still warm in my tummy, I stepped onto the train to work and spotted there was a free seat. I sat on it and started reading my book, while the spotty and scowling youth next to me, with wires coming from each of his prominent ears, jerked up and down, occasionally tapping his feet in an unco-ordinated manner, as though afflicted by turbulence in the nervous system.

But we shouldn’t give up on him. When he learns to suck a lozenge and pick his nose at the same time, there is no reason why he shouldn’t be the next Archbishop of Canterbury, unless, of course, he’s a Methodist.

The real problem arose two stops later on the journey between Birkenhead and Liverpool. Lots of passengers piled on, spilling down the corridor between the seats. My instinct was to offer my seat and the companionship of the young man to someone in need. But nobody else on the carriage stood up.

When I was young, it was very simple. Men gave up their seats to women. Even an arthritic uniped on a ventilator would wheeze himself onto his crutches, so that the strapping captain of the ladies’ lacrosse team could take his seat.

But now you have to be very careful. If I was to stand for any woman under the age of 90, would I be accused of some breach of politically correct etiquette? I remained seated, feeling increasingly guilty as I looked around and saw how squashed people were.

Then I looked again and the awful realisation dawned on me that I was the oldest person in the area. I wasn’t having that. So I stood up briskly and offered my seat to a girl, perhaps 40 years younger than me. She accepted it with a smile.

On arriving at the office, I celebrated with a slowly brewed cuppa.

LiSTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk