To: Mr. Tetley
Subject: All the Tea in China

How you doing, geordie? I've been working all the hours in the day and a co-worker mentioned that I should try something called coffee to help me stay awake. I was appalled at first, but after banging my drooping head off my keyboard so much that I now have 'qwerty' imprinted on my cheek, I decided to try it. It's not tea, but it's not bad either.

The office I work at has a big coffee robot that makes the brown stuff all day long and people drink whole flagons of it at a time. They also do not use milk but mostly drink it raw. Tastes like soil to me, so I put something in it called creamer and a bit of sugar to take the edge off. However, after a week of drinking four cups a day, my heart started racing, vision blurred and I got some odd hair growth on my palms, so decided to introduce a kettle to the office kitchen. After fixing myself a lovely red brick coloured cuppa, I turned to see a crowd of timid yanks with small sticks approaching. They prodded and pushed the kettle, confused but intrigued. One of them accidentally clicked the on switch and the majestic boiler sprang into life, causing 'ooohs', 'aaahs' and 'what the hells' to pour forth.

I then gave a short tutorial in tea making:

"Put tea bag in china white cup, add boiling water, add teaspoon of sugar and a splash of skimmed milk and stir. Dispose of teabag, sit back and think of blighty."

The amassed savages then set about perverting hundreds of years of tradition by adding lemons. Yep, lemons! Lemons go in Gin and Tonics, not tea! They also refused to call it just tea, but prefaced it with 'hot'. Finally, they drank it in glasses, not bone china cups. It was like watching someone use the Mona Lisa as a coaster. I got upset and denounced them all as traitors and bigots. They countered with taunts about tea parties and Boston. I've taken my kettle back home until they learn some decorum.

Laters taters.