The Fog of War: How to make a cup of tea
Thank you so much to Dani for having me here today for a guest post! I’m doing a bit of a blog-tour talking about the characters, settings and the history behind my new release, The Fog of War, and LoveBytes is one of the stops. The book is the first of a new trilogy in my Border Magic Universe. It’s a sapphic, historical, paranormal, romantic mystery set in rural England in 1920. You’ll be able to find the other posts listed on my website as they come out this week.
When Dani said I could pop in and guest-post about my new release, I asked what she’d like me to write about and she said ‘anything’. And I’ve had a bit of think and I’m going with how to make a proper British cup of tea. Because there is tea in all my books. Every single one. I have never written a book where the protagonists don’t make and drink at least one cup of tea. From a pot.
I realise this is the most terrible stereotyping ever, but there we have it.
I grew up in a farming family, with a coal-fired Aga that we had to rattle up every morning before you could boil the kettle, and fill with coals overnight to keep the fire in. It also heated all our hot water. If you had a bath and emptied the tank, all the heat would immediately go out of the stove to reheat the water and you wouldn’t be able to cook a meal. Not inconvenient, so much as needing to remember to do things in a particular order. A lot of my 1920s people seem to spend time putting the kettle on and pouring the water into the teapot and passing each other cups or mugs of tea, depending how posh they are.
So, dear friends-who-are-not-British, here is how you make a proper cup of tea.
- Procure a tea-pot. I have various sizes, from one that takes a single cup to the half-gallon metal kind suitable for church tea-parties.
- Procure tea. Good quality loose-leaf is best…I favour English Breakfast or Orange Pekoe. In this case you will need a tea-strainer. I also admit to a fondness for Yorkshire tea, which comes in teabags (Please do not tell my mother, who believes teabags are the work of the devil, particularly the ones with the string on).
- Fill the kettle with more water than you will need to fill the teapot. There is a reason for this.
- Put the kettle on to boil. Whilst it is heating, gather your cups and saucers (or mugs) and put them on a tray. If you are feeling particularly proper, use a tray-cloth—I usually use a tea-towel, as it mops up the spills when the dog/children/cat joggle the tray. Add the sugar container and milk, in matching china if you have visitors.
- Before the kettle boils, pour some of the hot water into the teapot, replace the lid, swirl it round and leave it for a moment. This is to heat the pot. If you don’t do this, your tea is not the correct temperature when you pour it as some of its heat has gone to the pot.
- When the kettle boils, LEAVE IT BOILING FOR A MOMENT whilst you empty the hot water out of the teapot and put in the tea leaves/bags.
- Now this is the tricky bit and depends on type of leaves, and personal preference. Traditionally you are supposed to add one spoonful of loose tea per person and an extra one ‘for the pot’. And the same with teabags. However, I like weak tea, so that tends to be too much. My rule of thumb is one spoon/bag of tea per pint of water.
- POUR THE WATER ON THE TEA WHILST THE KETTLE IS STILL BOILING.
- Refill the kettle and put it on to boil again. You will need this in a moment.
- Wait a couple of minutes and pour a little tea into the first cup. DO NOT STIR THE POT FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR CHOSEN DEITY. If it’s too weak, wait another couple of minutes. If you have more than one cup to fills, you pour everyone half a cup and then work your way back in the opposite direction filling the cups up, to even out the strength.
- Add milk and sugar to taste.
- When the kettle boils, top the pot up for a second round on the same tea leaves.
As beginners, please add the milk afterwards. More experienced tea-makers will be able to judge how much milk to use and can put it in the cups first.
And now you know how to do it. I shall expect feedback!
To finish, here’s a bit about The Fog of War (which contains lots of tea) and also an excerpt! Thank you so much for reading my post.
The Fog of War
Publisher: JMS Books LLC
Editor: Lourenza Adlem
Release date: 14 Aug 2014
Word Count: 50,000 words
Genre: Sapphic, found-family, historical, paranormal romantic mystery set in 1920s England.
Content Warning: Mention of domestic violence.
The quiet village of Bradfield should offer Dr Sylvia Marks the refuge she seeks when she returns home from her time in a field hospital in France in 1918. However, she is still haunted by the disappearance of her ambulance-driver lover two years previously ,and settling down as a village doctor is more difficult than she realised it would be after the excitement of front-line medicine. Then curious events at a local farm, mysterious lights and a hallucinating patient’s strange illness make her revisit her assessment of Anna’s death on the battlefield.
Lucille Hall-Bridges is at a loose end now her nursing work is finished. She felt useful as a nurse and now she really doesn’t know what to do with her life. She hopes going to stay with her friend Sylvia for a while will help her find a way forward. And if that involves staying at Bradfield with Sylvia…then that’s fine with her.
Will the arrival of Lucy at Bradfield be the catalyst that allows both women to lay their wartime stresses to rest? Can Sylvia move on from her love affair with Anna and find happiness with Lucy, or is she still too entwined in the unresolved endings of the past?
The first in the Bradfield trilogy, set in the Border Magic universe.
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About A. L. Lester
Writer of queer, paranormal, historical, romantic suspense, mostly. Lives in the South West of England with Mr AL, two children, a badly behaved dachshund, a terrifying cat, some hens and the duckettes. Likes gardening but doesn’t really have time or energy. Not musical. Doesn’t much like telly. Non-binary. Chronically disabled. Has tedious fits.
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It was a beautiful late August day when Sylvia motored down to Taunton to collect Lucy from the railway station. The sun shone through the trees as she followed the lane down the hill from the village and the sky above was a beautiful summer blue. She had left the all-weather hood of the Austin down and wore a scarf and gloves against the wind, topping her trouser outfit off with her new hat, which she pinned firmly to the neat coil of her long hair.
Walter had watched her fussing with her appearance in the hall mirror, stuffing his pipe. “Are you sweet on her?” he asked, somewhat acerbically.
“It’ll be cold with the hood down,” she said, crushingly.
“Yes, yes, so it will be.” He turned his attention back to his tobacco, face straight. “Be careful on the bends.”
“I will,” she said. “She’s a beast to drive, smooth on the straights and handles well on the corners, but I’ve no desire to end up in the ditch.”
She’d bought the big Austin coupe late last winter when she’d got fed up riding her motorcycle out to some of the more remote houses she was called to in the dreadful weather. It was huge, far bigger than she needed really, although the back seat was useful to transport a patient if she had to. She still preferred her ‘cycle, but it wasn’t exactly suitable as a doctor’s vehicle. Not very staid at all. The Austin wasn’t very staid either, in that it was huge and expensive; but one of the benefits of a private income was that she could afford it; and so why not be comfortable?
She pondered all this and more on the drive down to Taunton, mind floating along with no real purpose. She loved to drive and for some reason it calmed her thoughts and allowed them to drift.
It would be lovely to see Lucy again. As Walt had said, she was a sweet little thing. Although Sylvia didn’t want to revisit the grim minutiae of some of the worst times at Royaumont, it would be lovely to reminisce about some of their happier moments of camaraderie. It had been four years of extreme stress and grim terror lightened with moments of laughter and fun. Working with a team of competent women all pulling together for one purpose had been extraordinary. She’d never experienced anything like it before and she doubted she would again. She was delighted some of the staff had set up a regular newsletter so they could all stay connected.
And so what if Lucy was sweet on her. Sylvia wasn’t interested in that kind of complication anymore. She didn’t want to cause gossip in the village for a start…although she supposed people wouldn’t make any assumptions about two women living together these days after so many men hadn’t come home from France. But anyway, even if it wouldn’t cause gossip, she didn’t think about Lucy like that. And she doubted Lucy thought about Sylvia like that, despite Walter’s teasing. He was stirring the pot a little to see what bubbled up, that was all.
Those musings took her to the station.
The train was on time and was just pulling in as she got out of the car. She walked out onto the platform as the smoke was clearing and through the clouds, she made out Lucy.
She was beside the guard’s van, directing the guard and porters to what seemed like an unnecessarily large pile of luggage. Despite the clement August weather, she was wearing an extremely smart velvet coat with a fur collar over a beautiful travelling suit that hung to mid calf, topped with an extraordinary confection of a hat.
She looked competent and sophisticated and exceptionally beautiful. Not at all the slightly scapegrace young person of 1916 who had persuaded the hospital powers-that-be she was a suitable candidate for France, although she’d been only twenty-one and inexperienced as a nurse.
Well. Gosh.
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