tea is the most mysterious drink cos you can make it the same way every time and one day its soul-healing, intense pleasure and other days its completely inspid and uninspiring
Nah, it's always good for me, at least when I make it.
The most distressingly awful cup of "tea" I have ever drunk was in Berlin on new year's day, late in the evening. A bunch of us had hit it pretty hard the night before and had been drinking steadily since then, so we'd been awake for getting on for 40 hours and were all nursing a combined speed/ecstasy/Red Bull comedown and beer/Jaegermeister hangover. We were in the bar of the hostel where we were staying and I asked for a cup of tea. What I wanted, and needed, was something no-nonsense like PG Tips or Twinings English Breakfast, brewed toxically strong, with a splash of semi-skimmed and, given the state I was in, probably a couple of sugars as well.
What I was given was a small glass teacup full of hot-ish, but nowhere near boiling, water, with a teabag still in its paper wrapper on the side. This turned out to be Lapsang Suchong or some shit, which has its place, but this was not it. So I had this cup of not-quite-hot-enough, not-quite-strong-enough tea, that was all weirdly perfumed and gross anyway. And black. A request of
Haben Sie Milch, bitte? resulted in a little pot of some semi-synthetic, vegetable-fat-based cream substitute that was clearly intended for use with coffee.
I think I had something close to an existential crisis. It actually turned me into Jeremy Clarkson for a moment - "No wonder you cunts lost the war, can't even make a proper fucking cup of tea, grumble grumble..."