We should all be grateful that our new President is a tea drinker. Photo: DOI/Jeremy WignacourtA photo of President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca visiting young offenders last week shows her at a table talking to an aide, in that I-feel-your-pain look of hers. Right by her elbow there are a number of Joseph Aquilina Maltese-English dictionaries which she is about to distribute to the inmates on World Book Day, and then, right at the very corner of the photo, there is a delightful element of serendipity: her cup of tea.
Aha. Now we know how our President likes her tea! Murky: more a like a cup of Benna milk with a touch of tea bag. Very builders’. Very unsophisticated – the kind of tea which screams “viċin in-nies”, as fellow columnist Mark Anthony Falzon would put it. I bet at home she has tea in a glass, like you’d have it at Crystal Palace in Rabat.
You see, tea can say so much about you. Do you like it cloudy or splashy? Do you take milk? Do you use tal-gvern or tal-bott (condensed)? Do you drink it only at tea time? Do you take sugar? Do you extend your pinkie when holding the cup? Do you stick to herbal teas? Do you clink your spoon against the cup when stirring? Do you ever take a sip from the spoon?
The answers to these and many other questions can shed light on your lifestyle. In case you’re wondering, here are some pointers:
• Do you feel like “a nice cup of tea” even when you’re on the beach on a hot summer day? Then you are either a British expat or a fervent colonialist or Kenneth Zammit Tabona.
• Do you prefer loose leaf tea in a teapot to teabags? Then you are more conservative than Beppe Fenech Adami, Tonio Fenech and Giovanna Debono put together.
• Do you go for green tea? You secretly would like to be a Greenpeace activist and climb up Castille to unfurl an anti-hunting banner, and you go to Crystal Palace and other Maltese teashops because you think “they’re so sweet, so retro”.
• Do you like black tea with a squeeze of lemon? You suffer from the classic Maltese ailment of ħruq ta’ stonku (heartburn) but can’t bring yourself to cut out the caffeine because “mhux darba ngħixu” (we only live once – even if we moan our way through it)
• Is your preference for Earl Grey tea? You’re JPO to a T.
• Finally, given a choice, would you go for Positive Energy Yogi Tea? If the answer is yes, then you are very au courant with the times, very slick, nouveau middle class, and decidedly very, uh, liberal.
Of course, when I was a child, we had none of this fancy stuff – what kept us positive was not jumping in the air on green lawns but a green box full of Tower Tea teabags. I can evoke its smell to this day, that and the taste of the tea of my childhood: tea in a translucent greenish kikkra, prepared with a firm squeeze of the teabag, not too dark, not too light, a splash of condensed milk and a spoonful of sugar.
But let’s for a minute, go back to the President’s tea. She was probably asked whether Her Excellency would prefer tea or coffee. And she opted for tea. Now what does that say about her?
Tea drinkers are laid-back at work and ‘the life and soul’ of the office. They are also more feisty, team players, love a good gossip and dress in a ‘cool fashion’
The Daily Mail, as always, comes to the rescue. It tells us, with the authority it has on all these little nuances in life, that tea drinkers are laid-back at work and ‘the life and soul’ of the office. They are also more feisty, team players, love a good gossip and dress in a ‘cool fashion’.
The downside, according to this ‘survey’ quoted by the Daily Mail, is that coffee lovers are better paid than tea fans. Coffee drinkers earn €2,600 more than fellow tea drinkers.
However, coffee drinkers in the survey came out as argumentative and are more likely to be late for work despite their caffeine fix. Also, according to researchers, coffee sippers are more likely to be hot-headed, argumentative and live on a knife-edge.
We should all be grateful, therefore, that our new President is a tea drinker. As a matter of fact, now I urgently need to know what our other leaders drink. Is Bishop Charles Scicluna on camomile? Arnold Cassola on green?
I’m thinking about all these MEP candidates we have to vote for come this election – are they tea or coffee drinkers? Is there one who has their tea just like I do?
I just did the timesofmalta.com quiz to help me choose my ideal MEP. But sorry Norman Vella, just because I got you as my ideal match, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get my vote. You see, I really need to know how you take your tea.
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