Afternoon Tea Blend

I was recently given a box of Cartwright & Butler’s Afternoon Tea Blend. I am familiar with English breakfast tea which, unless one is a loafer or university student, is surely intended for morning consumption. ‘Afternoon tea’ reminds me of posh old ladies removing petite sandwiches and expensive, coloured cakes from three-tier cake stands in salubrious establishments. Quite how a liquid tea is better suited to an afternoon than an evening or morning, I cannot tell. I consulted the appropriate tea merchant’s website, which stated:

How one blend of 100% Ceylon tea can differ so from another seems curious to those of us who are not familiar with the intricacies of the Camellia sinensis plant, otherwise known as the tea bush. But a journey around the tea plantations will immediately provide the answer. Sri Lanka is the home of Ceylon tea and it offers a wondrous variety of growing regions, each of which yields a different flavour. Growing the tea at a medium altitude gives this tea a lighter, fresher flavour than its lower grown, strong and malty counterparts used for English Breakfast Tea. Best sipped in the afternoons with a plentiful array of biscuits and cake. Available here in a carton or in our signature clip-top tin.

I will confess that my familiarity with the intricacies of the Camellia sinensis plant are minimal. The implication is that if I were more familiar, the answer would be obvious. I am unlikely to nip across to the island of Ceylon to immerse myself in tea bush lore, so I guess I shall never know. Suffice to say, a cup of this Afternoon Blend I enjoyed very much at our chapel last Thursday afternoon. Did the time of day and location of the sun affect my disposition to enjoy the tea? One cannot say. 

There are many things I do not understand and cannot explain: wi-fi in my home; the combustion engine; Ikea’s furniture self-assembly instructions. Yet by and large, I may still benefit from them. The greatest mystery of all is the Divine Being who made and sustains the universe. I cannot comprehend Him, yet love Him I may, and go to be with Him I most certainly shall.

Now on the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river, that is, the Tigris, I lifted my eyes and looked, and behold, a certain man clothed in linen, whose waist was girded with gold of Uphaz! His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and feet like burnished bronze in colour, and the sound of his words like the voice of a multitude. Daniel 10:4-6