Brewing time

I’m not a little teapot and in fact, I’m not short or stout. I am an elegant hand painted China teapot. I am pink and green with a gold leaf trim and once I was the thing of envy amongst the local housewives. I was a wedding gift in July 1953, brought in a very ordinary brown box from the large department store in the city. For a while I sat proudly on the sideboard, I think the plan was to keep me there for special occasions but it wasn’t long before I was in action two, sometimes even three times a day, I was taken off every morning and every evening, and used to make two cups of the most perfect tea you could imagine. In those early days, it was always loose leaf tea, there was a small battered tin tucked in the kitchen cupboard alongside a special tea leaf spoon. It wasn’t like the ordinary teaspoons, it was more like a round scoop without a handle. One spoonful per person and with my perfect pear shape it was easy for the leaves to mix and blend and deliver flavour. Golden cups of tea every time.

Soon those two cups became two cups and a small beaker, a ceramic one with two handles. Two golden cups and one more milk than tea. Then it was three cups and the small beaker and then eventually four cups. I held the perfect amount of boiling water to prepare four perfect cups.

Things stayed that way for nearly 20 years, four teas in the morning and four in the evening. There were good days and bad days, in 1968 the pineapple that sits on top of my lid was knocked off, I say knocked off, the cat took a stroll across the sideboard and my lid flew onto the kitchen floor. Thank goodness the hard old tiles had been replaced with the softer and far more modern lino. I still did my job without the lid while it was expertly replaced using superglue, I was pleased it was so well done you couldn’t see the join. Then three years later I acquired a minor chip on my rim, I was never washed, only occasionally rinsed and it was during a vigorous rinse when I collided with the tap which took a small amount of my paint, while it harmed my appearance I could still do my business without failure. In fact in February 1976, I made tea for five to celebrate an engagement from then on it was occasionally tea for five. After the wedding it was tea for three every time.

In 1978, the switch was made to teabags. they never quite made the right kind of golden tea, but we made do and there were rarely complaints. I never saw the special spoon again, though the tin box remained, now filled with the Christmas savings money.

By 1980. It was two cups each time and once or twice a year even six. then the beakers came back, often I would be filled with two or three bags and did my very best to produce four cups and a couple of beakers. My work became more frequent in 1989, the mornings were later and there was tea with lunch, tea with dinner and often an extra one in the afternoon. Then one day in 1998, suddenly I was making cup after cup, sometimes six at a time, this went on for a couple of days before things settled but now it was just one, one cup of tea, three times a day.

And so that was it until the year 2007, August 12 to be precise. I made a cup of tea as usual at 8:45pm just before bed. No one came down the stairs to make tea at 7 am.

Now I’m in a completely new home.

I sit on a high shelf, right at the back.

Watching tea being made,

in cups.