First the serious bit, or the sensible bit. A friend who travels a lot was able to do a service for an elderly Indian at Delhi airport. The two got talking and the Indian said he was Professor of Tea Studies at Darjeeling University. "Ha," said our friend, "I've wanted for years to know something about making tea, and you are just the man to tell me." And he went on: "Which is the correct way to make it? Do I put a lot of leaves into the pot, then pour on boiling water and serve it before it gets too strong, or do I put fewer leaves into the pot and then stew it on the hob, in the Irish traditional way." The professor said the second way was the correct one. But it was a British firm, he said, that introduced the first way - using a lot of leaves - in order to sell more tea. So now, if you ask almost anyone, writes our travelling friend, they think you are strange, for "everybody knows how to make tea". But do they, he asks.
That is a useful story. No doubt all of us use more tea than is needed, but younger people may have heard from their elders, or read in books about the Emergency, how the people in this neutral State managed on an ounce (wasn't it?) of tea leaves per person per week - occasionally diving down to half-an-ounce. And what did Granny do? When everyone had finished, she took the leaves carefully out of the pot and dried the leaves, maybe over heat, if she had gas enough (this in towns and cities), and they were used again and again until there was no flavour or colour at all. So precious was tea that a newly married couple were delighted to get as a wedding present a one-pound tin of tea from a kindly woman in Clifden, County Galway. (Is it only in the country that people say "Brew the tea" or, and this may be a northernism, "Mash the tea." To "wet the tea" is fairly widespread.
The authoritative Mrs Beeton threw tea around like snuff at a wake: this was, of course, at the height of the Victorian age. "There is very little art in making good tea; if the water is boiling and there is no sparing of the fragrant leaf, the beverage will almost invariably be good." The rest is fairly normal. An earthen teapot is better than a metal one. And the water must be fresh boiled. There is also a device, the teafloat, "which keeps the tea at the top where water is hottest." Enough.