Tea, coffee & condoms

In one of my early attempts to write a novel - one that will forever remain in the bottom drawer - the central character, Jocelyn Hough, a rather ineffectual English EFL teacher who dreams of becoming a writer (Autobiographical? No way, man!) is obsessed with the idea that peoples, and their cultures, are defined by what they drink.
Here's Jocelyn explaining some of his beliefs about tea to a young American he has met on the train:

'It's funny, but from the moment tea was first imported to Europe you can see a distinct shift in European sensibility. Once tea appears there's some kind of new awareness of the individual. For example, the first mention of tea in Europe was in 1559 - the very year that Cellini started his autobiography. It's almost as if tea allowed us to look inside ourselves and for the first time accept what we found there.'
The American nodded with the attentive manner of a good listener, encouraging Jocelyn to go on.
'I know it sounds far-fetched, but there are plenty of other examples. For instance, the first boxes of tea reached Paris at the same time that Montaigne was writing his essays. Or look at London: the diffusion of tea there in the late 1650's occurred just as the English rejected Puritanism and were about to usher in the Restoration - what followed was an unprecedented period of social tolerance.'
'Whoa there! You don't mean to tell me that this guy, what did you say his name was - Montaigne? - actually wrote his stuff with a beaker of tea in his hand!'
'No, of course not! But that's not the point. I don't mean that tea caused any of these things to happen the way a cold beer causes condensation. I'm just pointing out some rather strange parallels: what Jung would call the 'synchronicity' of certain trends towards tolerant humanism and the use of tea.'

Not that I believed any of this, but the whole far-fetched conceit served as an excuse for a nice little joke: the never-finished and quite unpublishable magnum opus Jocelyn devotes his life to is entitled 'The Tea Drinker's Coffee Table Book'.
So to return to the theme some thirty years later, though now sounding like a veritable Grumpy Old Man, I've just been back to the UK for the summer and am depressed that in the Home Counties at least, it is no longer possible to order a cup of coffee in English any more. Just try - as I have been doing - going into your neighbourhood cafe, let alone a Costa or a Nero's, and asking for a small white coffee. "Is that a capper-cheeno or a lah-tay?" you’ll be asked . Admittedly, English coffee may not be very good – the British seem to prefer murky beverages made from freeze-dried acorns (judging by the taste) to the real thing, but please, why the linguistic travesty? However, I'll leave my diatribe against the italianisation of the English High Street for another day.
Besides, I'm a tea drinker. The which brings me to my real grouse: - tea socks.
Someone told me that the idea of collecting the sweepings off the tea-room floor and sealing them up in paper bags was a German invention, intended, no doubt, to undermine the moral fibre of the British Empire. The truth though, is even more sinister: the first patents for tea socks date back to 1903 in - you guessed it - our former colonies across The Pond. First appearing commercially around 1904, tea socks were successfully marketed by tea and coffee shop merchant Thomas Sullivan of New York, who was soon shipping his invention around the world. No doubt this was a cold war continuation of the Boston Tea-Party. Though bless his little (cotton?) socks, Thomas Sullivan never expected anyone to dunk his contraption unopened into a tea pot - still less serve it up on a saucer next to a cup of lukewarm water, as the Italians are fond of doing - his was merely a convenient way of sending samples of tea through the post.
Are you really telling me you can taste the tea? That you cannot taste the paper? Buon gustaio, amico mio, you are not! Let's face it, drinking tea made with tea bags is like having sex wearing a condom.
Except that I can think of no convincing justifications for the former, and plenty for the latter.
Allow me to finish this little rant with a recipe, a family blend - not, alas, my own (neither the family, nor the blend) - that makes for a very good cup of tea:
Mix a good English Breakfast with Earl Grey and Lapsang Souchong in proportions of 4 to 1 to 1.
And if you think tea leaves are too messy, why not acquire one of those cup-shaped filters (available, for example, from Whittard’s) that fit inside your mug or teapot: no mess, and all the taste!