A Teacup in a Storm

Well, Dear Reader, how I wish that I had come up with this original play on the English idiom ‘storm in a teacup’ . But I didn’t. ‘A Teacup in a Storm’ was, maybe still is, the title for a popular radio show in Hong Kong hosted by Allen Lee and Albert Cheng among others.

Tea is an integral part of British culture. It has been drunk in huge amounts in the country over many years.  A cuppa tea has become a tradition. That in itself is an anachronism because tea does not grow in the UK. But it is less of a peculiarity when one realises that it is a hangover from the days of the British Empire.

The idiom ‘a storm in a teacup’ means ‘a fuss about nothing’. What the French would call ‘une querelle de clocher’, a clock tower quarrel.  So I love the cleverness out of Hong Kong which created a reversal of this famed idiom, Why? Because a cup of tea was a universal panacea when I was growing up; something which people did to give them time to formulate a solution in a crisis. It was a delaying tactic. Buying time by putting on the kettle while the world was crumbling about one was a favoured task to distract from the dreadful reality that needed to be faced.  Sweet tea also became a treatment for people in shock, both physical and mental, to the extent that British soldiers wounded in battle were inevitably vomiting after they had been operated on because as soon as they were stretchered off the battlefield they were given a sweet cup of tea.

When I began my teaching career in the London Borough of Hounslow in 1976 I bought my first car. Strange decision at the time because nobody living and working in London really and truly needs a personal motorised vehicle. But I was but a callow youth. On a cold, dark winter’s evening I was driving home through the urban streets of Isleworth when a car travelling in the opposite direction came around the corner on the wrong side of the road. I swerved but the crash was inevitable. I woke from brief unconsciousness to find my vehicle straddling the kerb with its engine attempting to wrap itself around a lamp-post. I managed to get out of the car, noted that the guy who had hit me had done the same although his vehicle was straddling the road’s centre line.  Unsteady on my legs, I had some degree of shock so sat down on the kerb at the side of the road . I was dazed and have little memory of much from that night. Except, Dear Friends, a stranger suddenly appeared out of the darkness, loomed over me and thrust something hot into my hands.  You’ve guessed it. From the row of houses on the road side, Mrs. Everso Kindly-Citizen had been in the midst of her daily fix of ‘Coronation Street’*, heard the crash, pulled back the curtains in her front room, noted the scene, retreated to her kitchen, picked up another cup and poured an extra cup of tea, adding three sugars for good measure because she realised that somebody out there was likely to be in shock. Tea helps but sweet tea helps more.

So I have been in many houses since, occasionally as part of a sad event, often when conversation has become stilted and awkward. The level of awkwardness can be judged not only by the level of embarrassment or the uneasy silence but also when somebody in the gathering decides to get up and make us all a nice cup of tea.

“So, Mrs. Bathelwaite, I just popped in to tell you that my husband, Fred, is back in prison again.”

“Why don’t I make us a nice cup of tea?”

“He’s got four years.”

“Sugar?”

OK, friends, have I flogged this particular horse to death yet? Indeed, I think  I have left no turn unstoned? Ha!

Thanks for reading. Be safe.

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                      *’Coronation Street’ is a British soap opera which has been around since the 1960s. It is on for 30 minutes on select evenings. When it finishes, the power grid in the whole country experiences a surge in the demand for electricity because so many households then put the kettle on to make a cup of tea.