Your ViewsKeep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions. To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin). Please keep your mails coming in to nicey@nicecupofteaandasitdown.com | If you like, you can use this search thingy to find stuff that matches with any of the icons you pick, or use the fantastic free text search, Yay! | Your e-Mails |
Jenny Hughes |
As a relative newcomer to your site, I have yet to find any reference to the most fundamental debate in the tea drinking world which is the cup vs mug divide. If all has been resolved, then I apologise for opening old wounds but there is a serious shortage of cup and saucer information on a site dominated by mug-gers.
Speaking as one who would have to be really desperate for tea and a sit down before I would even entertain the idea of a mug, (yuk!) I feel I ought to point out the top ten advantages of cups and saucers.
1 Most cups are wider at the top than mugs and accommodate a greater range of dunking biscuits without breaking them in two - which is a really upsetting thing to have to do
2 The narrowing shape of cups stops you dunking the biscuit too far and risking total collapse - the ultimate nightmare
3 Saucers are really handy if your nice cup of tea and a sit down is even better with a cigarette. As you have to wash the saucer anyway, it saves finding an ashtray
4 If you don't smoke, you can balance your biscuits on the saucer (don't try it with chocolate ones)
5 When you break the cup, you can save the saucer, (because it might come in useful one day) until you have about 20 odd ones in the cupboard and then you have always got something to give to the jumble sale
6 Bone china cups are thin and keep the tea hot.
7 Cups can be seriously tarty in a way mugs just can't. My favourite is a 50's pearlised, swirly, peach creation with a gold rim bought for £2 in Ponty market.
8 You get noticeably less tea in a cup which means you can justify having two nice cups of tea and a sit down and two cups equal more than a mug
9 Cups and saucers often come with teapots which are wondrous things and make a cup of tea and a sit down into an occasion. (Watch this space - there will be a follow up outburst on teapots vs teabags-in-a-mug)
10 Cups and saucers get mega brownie points from your Nain (Nan to those outside Wales) and other elderly relatives when they come visiting so that they don't notice the rest of the house is like a tip
11 (Sorry, getting carried away) Quite simply, coffee comes in mugs (and also in jam jars, buckets, plastic beakers and who the hell cares anyway) NOT tea.
12 This site is clearly not called nicemugofteaandasitdown, so you could probably get done under the Trades Descriptions Act unless you provide serious air space for cup-pers as well as mug-gers
Jen from Pontypridd |
Nicey replies: Jenny,
OK, ok, I'll post your cup rant. We really don't care what people drink their tea out of just so long as they are happy.
Be careful now we know where you live we might come round and get a picture of your tarty mug on our next visit to Ponty. We make special trips there once or twice a year for sit down Faggots and Peas.
I shall now brace myself for a torent of mug-counter-rants. |
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Suzy |
Hi Nicey,
While I was working in a pub I was honoured enough to receive a lurid orange 'World's Sexiest Woman' mug from one of my customers (although I'm not, but it's nice to think I am when I'm drinking tea). You can only imagine the problems it caused. It seemed to be a honey trap for all the female employees, and I was incensed to see them fighting over MY mug - MINE, dammit! After things had calmed down, the atmosphere became rather frosty and I decided to take my mug home so I could drink from it in safety and comfort.
Strange, it isn't even a nice mug. I'd prefer if it was white inside so I can see exactly how strong my tea is. But it's the first mug i've had that hasn't come with an Easter Egg, and that's something that has to be defended at all costs.
On the teaspoon issue... I used to have tea round my Mum's and catch her using some of the skankiest, most vile and mucky teaspoons ever. Eww.
Suzy.
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Jon Don |
Dear N.C.O.T.A.A.S.D.
I was reading your plea for P.M.A week, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the great feeling of pathos which hit me. I felt for workers everywhere. I myself own a PWM (Personal Work Mug). It is a Mario and Yoshi mug with Bowser emitting fireballs at the Italian plumber and his prehistoric pal. It is also stained from the age-old remnants of past brews throughout time. I work in a garden centre, and the mug is no doubt the host to many a rat or mouse in its humble cupboard with broken leaning door as standard. However, there is always a feeling of inner turmoil felt within myself whenever I see some plain faced mocking warehouse worker slurping mockingly from my battered old chalice. This plea goes out to you all. Respect people?s mugs. Appreciate the etiquette of the mug society.
We beg you.
Jon Don, Manchester.
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Wendy Gordon |
Hello nicey,
I was just referred to this site - what a find!
I have a story that is more about a tea SPOON, than a tea mug. I worked in an office that was sited next to the office workers' kitchen. You had to walk through the kitchen to visit the toilet! (The least said about that, the better!) Anyway, I was very particular about my mug and enamel handled spoon, and was most disconcerted when the latter went astray. It was gone for a few days (I mourned) and then turned up down the bog! Well, I wasn't going to remove it, so just did my business as usual (in the bog). There the spoon remained for two days. On day three, I entered the kitchen to find a colleague emerging from the toilet with right arm soaked to the elbow, enamel handled spoon in hand, commenting about wasted resources. She simply rinsed the
offending article under the cold tap then proceeded to make her tea with it!
Needless to say I never accepted a hot drink from her again! |
Nicey replies: OK we'll put a mug against this one as its in the spirit of personal mug week.
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Amy Cummins |
Dear Nicey,
A few years ago a colleague and I had a very tricky "personal work mug" problem to deal with. Our boss - a corpulent, red-faced man with a perpetual sweaty sheen, a surprising number of carnivorous teeth and porky fingers would occasionally use our personal mugs. As it only happened every few months, none of us wanted to risk making a scene. We already had enough to deal with, keeping him away from our personal biscuit supplies. He actually used to rummage through our drawers (I mean our desk drawers, naturally) looking for biscuits - even while we were there - then he would help himself to them, talking and laughing with his mouth full and spraying us in the crumbs OF OUR OWN biscuits. Sometimes he also grabbed hold of our telephones and dribbled crumbs into them too while barking orders to someone in another department. I hate to think how many cocktail sticks we used to get through in a week, prizing them all out of the perforations.
We tackled the mug problem in two ways. I took inspiration from my dear old Auntie Dorothy's tea cups and purchased a selection of three of the most unappetising old-ladyish lipsticks I could find in puce, orange and raspberry. At the end of the day, I would wash my mug, but then - and this is the important bit - I would apply each of the lipsticks in turn and imprint highly visible, slightly smeared lip-prints around the circumference of the mug (this works best on a light-coloured mug). My friend felt she needed a different ploy. She obtained some yellow food colouring which she would mix with half an inch of water and leave in the mug each night. She also hit upon the excellent idea of standing a medium-sized paint brush in the liquid before replacing the mug in the back of the cupboard. Eventually, a yellow stain ring appeared at the bottom of the mug and she was able to dispense with the food colouring altogether, simply pouring in water to level of the stain mark.
The biscuit problem proved inexorable. We tried embedding sweetex tablets in the jaffa cakes and wrapping long hairs around the middle layer of custard creams, but were perplexed to note how little this appeared to bother him.
Yours
Amy Cummins
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