A Trio of Teas

by Mary

During the last couple of weeks my eye was drawn to three stories with a common though unlikely element linking crime, WWII, and funeral catering.

Tea.

Last month I read about a scam whereby victims were tricked into purchasing Scottish-grown tea. The culprit made over £500,000 by selling foreign-grown tea under such names as Highland Green and Scottish Antlers plus other blends supposedly grown on the Wee Tea Plantation, located on a former sheep farm in Perthshire. As a sideline he also sold tea plants said to have been grown in Scotland to entrepreneurs who fancied trying their hands at growing materials for the cup that cheers but does not inebriate.

Scotland's Food Crime Unit brought him to justice last month. I'm now wondering if before too long we'll see an investigator from a similar unit as the protagonist in a mystery series. After all, with the current raging popularity of mysteries involving shops offering various kinds of comestibles it would seem a natural pairing, like a cuppa with a ginger bikky to dunk in it, Especially if it turned out the edibles were poisoned. We could call it Tart Noir.

Not long afterwards I stumbled over an unusual story from 1941. In occupied Holland RAF planes arrived one night and dropped hundreds of miniature parachutes carrying unexpected but most welcome cargoes -- small bags of tea. 75,000 of them, each containing an ounce of tea, a gift to the populace from unoccupied plantations in the Dutch East Indies. The message on their labels: "The Netherlands will rise again. Greetings from the free Dutch East Indies. Have courage." *

The third leaf of my tea-related trio of articles is my discovery of the what appears to be the newish custom -- at least to me -- of giving teabags in decorative envelopes to mourners at post-funeral gatherings. The minions of the Maywrite Research Bureau tell me traditional blends such as Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe are popular choices for these occasions, while special blends or herbal teas are also available if preferred. We'd have liked to include such remembrances for the funeral tea in Ruined Stones, had such offerings been practised at the time. However, even if it had, it would have been difficult to mention in that particular chapter due to wartime rationing. The novel is set in 1941 and the adult allowance per week at the time was two ounces, reckoned to be enough for 30 cuppas.

Speaking as a long time javaphile I was happy to subsequently learn that coffee, though sometimes difficult to obtain, was one of the few items not rationed in the UK at one time or another during the war.

* Photo of a parachute with a (presumably empty) teabag at https://x.com/PotteriesMuseum/status/962667786999910401

Author as History

by Eric

A generally accepted rule of thumb is that a novel can be considered historical if it is set at least fifty years in the past.  That seems quite recent.  I've always felt that "history" was what happened before I was born.  On the other hand, in the news these days I read about things I can't imagine happening even twenty or thirty years ago. We are indeed, by some measures, living in a different era.

Mary and I have never had a problem classifying our fiction.  The Eastern Roman Empire during the sixth century when John tackles murders amidst the intrigues of Justinian's court is far removed from the present day and our two Grace Baxter books take place during World War II which while fairly recent is commonly accepted as historical.

But fifty years ago? I have T-shirts that old. Well. almost. You think I'm kidding?  Mary recently dug out from some deep geological strata of clothing, my Entertainment Law T-shirt dating back to the late seventies. At the end of his course each year -- which focused on recording artist contracts -- our professor gave out the equivalent of the traditional tour T-shirt. The highlight of that course was a visit from Debbie Harry, one of the prof's clients, who railed against the iniquities of the music industry. Is she a historical figure now like Empress Theodora?

I can remember the 1950s and they are well into accepted historical novel territory. What I remember best, though, are not for the most part earthshaking events but little ways in which everyday life and my state of mind differed. For example, as a child who gorged on Tom Swift Jr books and science fiction juveniles by Andre Norton and Robert Heinlein, a moon landing was a dream of the future to look forward to, not something that happened a long time ago, and didn't lead to moon colonies or change the world as the books I read imagined.

Okay, so a dream of the future that is now obsolete is sort of tenuous, but there were plenty more concrete things that have vanished from our lives since then. Important things. Fizzies. Don't laugh, being able to drop a tablet into a glass of water and have instant bubbly soda was magic, or like something from a science fiction novel.  As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Sure, Fizzies tasted like flavored Alka-Seltzer but I kind of liked Alka-Seltzer.

Then there was chewing gum. This may be personal to me. As far as I know, people still chew gum but I don't notice it as much as I used to.  When I was a kid it was a big part of my life. My friends and I all chewed gum all the time.  We wouldn't be without a pack of gum in our pockets any more than adults would be without a pack of cigarettes. There were flavors that aren't generally available today: Black Jack, Clove, Beemans, Teaberry. You weren't supposed to chew gum in school but funnily enough the undersides of our desks were covered with fossilized gum. And this isn't even mentioning Bazooka bubble gum, which came wrapped up with a Bazooka Joe comic execrably printed and never slightly funny even if you could decipher it. And why did Joe have a patch over his eye? Had that bubble he was blowing burst violently? Still worse were the hard sticks of gum packed with baseball and other trading cards. Now you can just buy the cards. You don't have to endure that gum. Kids today have it so easy.

There are many more important changes of course: instantaneous communication between all parts of the earth, the home computer, the Internet. It is a wonderful thing to have the largest library in history available on your desk top. When my computer crashes the loss of knowledge is magnitudes greater than happened when the Library at Alexandria burned but luckily it can all be restored again by reconnecting to the Internet. No longer does answering a question require a hike to the local library to consult its Encyclopedia Britannica. Unfortunately modern technology comes with a price. The Internet has spawned mobs of angry loudmouths who spread hatred and divisiveness. Would society be better and kinder without the Internet?

So, I'm not sure the world has changed enough in fifty years for 1975 to be considered historical. But the fifties...yes, that was another world.