All of this tea tasting made me think – why should the joy of blind tea tasting be confined to my friends at work? Why can’t all my tea loving buddies get a taste?

So here’s the plan.

If you’re game, I’ll post you a selection of sealed and marked envelopes, each containing a different tea bag. A final envelope will contain the identities of each tea. We can then synchronise our tea tasting to a time we all have time for tea, as tea tasting takes time, and similtaneously taste teas, blind, together. Ideally, we’d all be able to taste at the same time, allowing tea-tweets or live tea-blogging.

This offer is open to all and everyone. Only requirement is that you must like tea. A lot. And send me your address.

I do however need some help tracking down new and exciting teas for us to taste. It must be bagged, for work time convenience. It should be a square bag, without any writing or give away labels (no pyramid bags or round Tetleys bags or anything). It should be a black tea, of similar style to a breakfast tea, so we’re comparing roughly similar teas. This is no place to be rolling out chais, russian caravans or mango teas. So, please fire away with your tea selections, I’ll pop to the shops with the tea and we’ll take it from there.

Brew on!

You might now that I’m rather partial to a cup of tea. You might even know that my favourite brew comes (besides those cups of Pu-Err or Almond Cream in Lee Rosy’s) in the form of Yorkshire Tea (bags normally, I’m too lazy at work for loose leaf).

So imagine my surprise when a work colleague mentioned a superior tea! Oh how we ridiculed, for there can be no superior tea to Yorkshire, surely, I thought. Or can there?

No, don’t be so silly.

Yet, curiosity got the better of me. What was the magical tea? Was it really better? How would I go about answering these deep philosophical questions?

Said work colleague came to the rescue, with the offer of a bag of this new, super tea. But, to keep this fair, it had to be tastest blind. This is the story of that tasting…

Three envelopes were produced. One contained the staple of my working life, a Yorkshire tea bag. A second envelope contained this imposter of a tea bag, one tea bag supposedly so good, it was better. A third envelope, not to be opened until the very end, contained the identities of the tea contained within each envelope.

Tea is a serious business. James and I, a trusted tea drinking chap from round the corner of the office, set about how this should be executed. Two identical mugs were procured from the kitchen, with our two envelopes and some rather detailed and technical scoring sheets drawn up from considered research from the internets.

A bag went into each mug once we’d had a good smell of each. Tea A smelt delicious, with a slightly woody aroma. Tea B also smelt delicious, but perhaps lacked the air of fragrance of A. This was going to be tough.

Boiling water went into each mug, similtaneously, and both teas were allowed a minute or two to steep. Having removed the bags (saved for later in case further tests were required), we noted the coloury and aroma of both teas. Again, tea A smelt wondrous, a real thing of beauty. Tea B wasn’t far behind though, with a slightly richer colour but lacking the depth of aromas.

Now, to taste.

A comes through again. B is still a fine brew, but there’s something about A that is just, well, better. Cleaner, denser, deeper. More aromatic.

How would our competing brews compare with milk? Tea B turned into a fantastic brew, one I’d very joyed to sup at my desk. Sadly, it was trumped by Tea A once more – this was an ideal cuppa.

Tea A wins. Without a doubt. But which brew is which? Would our staple Yorkshire tea bag come out trumps, seeing off this challenger, or would it have been displaced from our hearts?

There was only one way to find out. The third envelope had to be opened.

It contained the identities of both teas.

Which would it be?

….

The tension mounted. We waited. And waited. While the instigator, our colleague who’d been so kind as to introduce a new and fine tea, sat in a meeting.

And we waited.

Find out the result after the jump…

Finally the time for the opening came.

You want to know the results, yeah?

Scroll down….

…. further…

… and tea A was….

[mighty drum roll of epic proportions]

…. about to be unveiled as….

not Yorkshire tea, which resided in envelope B,

but….

Betty’s Tea!

We have a new tea supremo! And a bloody good cuppa it is indeed! Blended by Betty’s & Taylors of Harrogate, those fine folks that also make Yorkshire, it was champion.

This blog has mothballed somewhat. This is not for lack of wanting to update it, more a complete lack of time and an utter lack of patience for what is becoming a rather frustrating, dated and tempermental laptop. It crashes, I go make a cup of tea while it gets going again, repeat until one of us gives up for the night.

I am sorry.

More blog posts to come in the future. Perhaps.

I do like a good brew.

And I do like to make lists of things.

And I especially like really flashy, yet utterly pointless things on the internets that allow you to combine the two. Like Steepster, which appears to have no purpose whatsoever besides remembering what sort of tea you had at breakfast time, or what was the last cup of tea your friend made.

So, in the name of procrastination, I suggest you all start to T’log*.

Steepster

*who needs vlogs or blogs when you can log your tea consumption

I finally got round to getting a pro flickr account and uploaded a bunch of old photos, from the drive to Mongolia, road trips around the USA and some other odds and sods. Also means I (and you, lovely reader) can access some of my older photos.

It is supposed to be the impetus to focus on photography a bit more, ensure I’ve always got a camera on hand and get back into the habit of photography not only the unusual or the scenic, but also the everday, the normal. Everywhere I’ve been I have photos of the sights and the memorable, yet none of what actual made those places so interesting, so special – the things you look over when confronted with them every day.

It should also mean I drag myself to more gigs, see more bands and take more photos in that setting. And as a result of all of this, if I’m really lucky, I’ll start taking better photographs. We’ll see.

So if you fancy a browse of what has come before, click here and explore a little. Most I’ve organised into sets, yet there are loads of loose photos floating around too. I’d welcome comments, either on this blog or on flickr itself, so knock yourselves out….

Over 6 months since I finished my MSc dissertation, I’ve revived it having had a chat with my supervisor who wants me to try and get it published, either solo or co-authoring with him. Which seems a great opportunity to make a contribution to the academic field; even better as he believes it stands a good chance of making a good/excellent journal.

Just need to find the time to sit down and work on it now – 15,000 words cut down to 3,000-5,000 heavily edited and revised words. The process may take some time – not just in the initial editing and rewriting, but submitting to journals, waiting for referees to comment/criticise, answering those, repeating, resubmitting and hopefully, one day in the future, receiving that acceptance.

Re-reading it the other week I was struck by how much I enjoyed writing it at the time, even given the circumstances. It makes me wander whether what I’m currently doing is what I want to be doing; would I enjoy the “academic” lifestyle more and am I even cut out for it? This is a test. If I can enjoy this and get the satisfaction from it, maybe doing a bit of research into a PhD for 2010 or 2012 isn’t such a bad idea.

Weekends without Indietracks just don’t cut it; I’ve been having withdrawal symptoms ever since. Its not just the cracking line up (musical highlights including La Casa Azul, Camera Obscura, Cats On Fire, One Happy Island, Au Revoir Simone, The School, The Marshmallow Kisses, and all number of impromptu performances including some Talulah Gosh songs performed acoustically by Amelia Fletcher), or the opportunity to go play on numerous old steam trains. Its not the huge variety of local ales, not the choice of discos generally playing all the songs you love but only get to hear in your bedroom, nor the excellent nature trail (4 (four!!) types of dog spotted). Nor is it feeding angry geese bananas, befriending the local felines, or trying to play football in the rain holding an umbrella and a full pint. It’s probably just hanging with friends you don’t see often enough, bumping into friends you didn’t expect to see and making new friends while you’re at it.

Best weekend for a long long time.

Why do train companies insist of blasting you with announcements of what magazines you can buy and what paninis are on offer, at such volume, in the “quiet” carriage of the train? How is this less intrusive than someone chatting on the phone?

Having returned from 2 weeks Ethiopia at the weekend, I’ve got round to uploading some of my photos. Digital only at the moment, but it was the first trip with my new D90 and I was pleased with the results. There’ll be more photos soon, once I get the medium format pics from the Diana and the 35mm from the Holga back from the processors.

Monastery within a cave, Lalibella, Ethiopia

More photos available here.