Fortnum & Mason’s Breakfast Blend Tea

Yestermorning, I drank a nice cup of Fortnum & Mason’s Breakfast Blend Tea. It is loose leaf (which, astonishingly, adds to the cost) and was given to me in a rather fabulous tin which I intend to re-use when the its precious cargo depletes. This is quite possibly the poshest tea I own, even making Earl and Lady Grey appear drab and middle class. The sales patter states:

Our historic and ever-popular Breakfast tea has been a fixture on breakfast tables since the mid-1800s. A full-flavoured Assam blend, it’s a strong and robust cup created for morning sipping. Perfect with breakfast, in all its forms.

Well I had fried eggs on toast for my breakfast, which is not frightfully posh, but even Fortnum & Mason concedes that it can be taken with anything. On the tin’s instructions, however, I was somewhat horrified to learn that I had not quite followed the precise instruction:

A splash of milk- done!

Water at 100 degrees- done!

Freshly drawn water- oh no!

My house does not have a well, and I must make do with piped water from the tap. I can well imagine that in some Fortnum & Mason customers’ homes, there are indeed wells in the cellar, courtyard or elsewhere on the estate, from which water may be ‘drawn’. I also do not doubt that there are staff to perform this task, while the drinker awaits his or her breakfast in a four-poster bed. I suspect that my faux pas makes little difference to the taste, and I still enjoyed washing down my cooked eggs with its malty flavour. Here is a tea which I can take with anything, the drawn water being an extra, or a perhaps just a ‘serving suggestion’, as purveyors of tinned pies would likely call it.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is for all tribes, nations and languages. It is not an American or European preserve, any more than it was once a Greek, or Roman, or Jewish one. Whatever one’s culture, the good news of sins’ forgiveness can be enjoyed by as many as shall believe it, regardless of family, education, ethnicity or social class. I am probably one of the more plebeian drinkers of Fortnum & Mason’s products but this does not in any way prevent me from enjoying their taste, nor prevent them from taking my money when I make a future purchase.

As He says also in Hosea: “I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved.” Romans 9:25

“And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.” Romans 9:26