Why Make the Effort – “Not My Cup of Tea”
I was sat in a Costa the other day where, in spite of the name, I ordered a cup of tea.
Not for me one of the multitudes of Earl Greys or flavoured blends, but a simple mug of builders’ tea.
Even that, however, has now been branded as “English Breakfast.”
Which begs the question: what happens if you want it for lunch?
My immediate reaction was — Error, error!
For one very simple reason: tea is supposed to be made with boiling water, water that has reached at least 100 degrees centigrade.
The one I received was, at best, lukewarm.
A warning to all you young people:
As you get older, you find you become dismayed at most things, most of the time.
Now, I understand why the tea was only warm.
Coffee, and for that matter hot chocolate, as produced by the fancy machines in such establishments, is made with water or milk — or both — at a temperature some way short of boiling point.
That’s how the best coffee is brewed.
As a digression, I once bought a cup at the Costa in Dubai Airport made with boiling water.
It was undrinkable, not just because of the temperature but because it was bitter.
Anyway, back to Costa in Newton Abbot.
Coffee, I decided, was going to be the answer.
The tea was, to put it mildly, “not my cup of tea.”
Which is a strange thing to say.
Since I’d paid for it, it was obviously my cup of tea — except in the colloquial sense that, because of its temperature, it wasn’t.
That incident set me thinking about other things that aren’t “my cup of tea.”
Premiership football (soccer, to our American cousins), the UK Government, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Benjamin Netanyahu and South West Water being amongst many.
Closer to home: bad drivers who cut you up or fail to acknowledge when you let them in, bad roads, and of course certain people I’ve met — some of whom for a reason only known to themselves continue to refer to me as a colleague when they have made it clear I am definitely not “their cup of tea”.
In their case, I simply avoid or ignore them whenever possible.
It’s strange.
When you’re young — and I mean very young — you want and expect everyone to be your friend.
But at what point do we realise that isn’t possible?
When do we understand that some people simply aren’t “our cup of tea” — and that we aren’t theirs?
At what point do we decide that we’re not impressed by certain people, or that we’re not going to waste any effort trying to deal them?
Of course, and quite naturally, we must also remember that some people think exactly the same about us.
Think of those we meet on holiday — people we’ll never see again — and ask yourself: why do we even try to impress them?
Worse still is when, just like my lukewarm tea, we continue to spend time on people who don’t really matter to us.
That isn’t to say that people don’t matter.
Everyone matters — but not necessarily to us as individuals.
Not everyone you meet will like you, and sometimes there’s no obvious reason why.
Likewise, you won’t like everyone you meet — and you couldn’t explain why if asked.
So why make the effort?
Wouldn’t we be better off concentrating on those we love, and who love us?
As it happens, I like both coffee and tea.
So whether someone is “not my cup of tea” or even “my cup of coffee,” the result will be the same: I’ll be polite when in their company, but I won’t seek their company out.
Life is simply far too short.
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