1. The Importance of the British Tea Break
On the cold and damp island I come from the importance of tea drinking just can’t be stressed enough.
Almost any time of day your host can suggest making a cup of tea. The correct response to this offer is utter surprise, followed by a sense of awe at the sheer intellectual ability to make such a unique suggestion; then grateful acceptance.
Working as a gardener made me appreciate the relationship between drinking tea and work. I was employed in the gardens of a tiny college in an ancient small town in Southern England.

The head gardener, Old George, was a veteran of World War II and had risen to the rank of private by the duration. This accounted for his solid dislike of the officer class, and, in particular, one college functionary who had hung onto the title of Major. The Major was George’s boss, but he rarely ventured as far as our gardener’s hut. If the army were looking for men to start at the bottom and stay there, then George had fit the bill. But the military experience was not lost on him. He had gained a sense of time.
With military precision, George insisted his crew of three gardeners must show up for work precisely at 8 a.m. This was because, by that time, George had got the kettle boiling for our first cup of tea of the day. Being late for your tea was a criminal offence in George’s view.
As you know, the British climate can be inclement. Rain is always a danger to gardeners of our ilk. Our first task was to assess the weather. We would all bend our minds to the problem with alacrity. Of course, tea is perfect for enhancing the brainpower of those, like us, whose job it was to make important decisions.
If it were raining, which it often was, there were three options. First, we could have another cup of tea and sit in the gardener’s hut to see if the rain would subside. This was usually the prudent choice. Prudence is a qualification necessary in our line of work. If this were the case, George would roll an enormous cigarette the size of a cigar and attempt to hide in a cloud of blue smoke behind his tabloid newspaper. Sounds of outrage in the form of grunts and muffled epithets could often be heard through the haze. It was at these times George would demonstrate his skill with the malapropism.
“Them volcanoes is always corruptin’,” he would blurt out.
“I wouldn’t want to be one of them computers going up to London on the train every day,” he would mumble.
It took me a good week of working there to translate what George was actually saying. It wasn’t just the accent, incomprehensible though that was. He would always talk with his enormous roll-up in his mouth.
Frank, a veteran gardener and a true master of inertia, would look wistfully out of the window. In a particularly energetic mood, he would sip his tea thoughtfully. But when Frank had an excess of elan vital he would recount, in mind-boggling detail, exactly what he had for his supper the night before. Frank was by then in his sixties and newly married after a life of bachelorhood. He never ceased to be impressed by how well his new wife could serve frozen peas, or cook a potato to perfection.
Our other teammate was Ben. Ben had recently graduated from the local art school, but didn’t want to have to go to London to take a full-time textile design job. Ben truly appreciated history and couldn’t bear to leave the old-world pubs he loved so much, even though he was so often thrown out of them. Ben was a local, and quite gifted at rolling up his own cigarettes, although they were smaller than George’s. Ben knew his place.
With magnificent prescience George would prognosticate. The rain, if it indeed were raining, would be “set in for the day,” or it was, “something or nothing.” If George’s pronouncement were of the set-in-for-the-day kind, joy would fill our hearts. We would know that life is worth living and has profound meaning. In a particularly generous mood, George would tell us to “slide off home.” George was a true gentleman on these occasions and a credit to working-class solidarity.
On the other hand, if he were in a bad mood, it meant toil. We would have to go out into the shed and clean the gardening tools. But worse yet, his decision that the rain was of the something-or-nothing category (drizzle) would send our crew into the depths of despair. It meant we had to go outside and work.
Work. In winter, work consisted of raking leaves (boring), clipping hedges (not bad), and having bonfires (fun). In summer, we mostly mowed grass and watered just about anything that was green.
But let me get back to tea. If we had to put in a full day’s work it went like this. At eight o’clock in the morning we would have tea. Not fifteen minutes later, we would burst into action by stepping outside. After some professional conferring as to choice of tools, we would load our three-wheel vehicle (top speed 15 mph) and work continuously for an hour and fifteen minutes. At this critical point, someone would be delegated to go back to the hut and put the kettle on.
By ten, we would all be back in the hut for a quick thirty-minute tea break. After discussing any possible conflicts between our ability to work and the weather, we would again venture forth and continue with our raking, or mowing, until noon.
We would then disappear for our well-earned lunch break. I lived about a fifteen-minute walk away, so it really didn’t make much sense for me to start my lunch hour until I got home.
About and hour-and-a-half later we would return refreshed by more tea. Now this is where the really concentrated effort would be put in. We would work, without stop, well, without stopping very much, for an hour and three quarters, at which time someone would have to trek back to the hut to put the kettle on. This journey could take about four minutes if we were at the far end of the campus and if rushed. But we gardeners were too wise to go about rushing. It just wasn’t the done thing.
By three o’clock, we would all be having a nice sit down and a cup of tea. If the weather was fine and George had finished his tabloid newspaper we would have to “get mobile” again. I assume that this professional term may have derived from George’s military training.
Even on some of the most grueling of long days we would have packed up by four forty-five in the knowledge that we had done our bit. This sort of exhausting life is not for everyone, and without sufficient supplies of tea I don’t see how this level of output can be achieved.
At times of strife, in war or peace, the British have always relied on a nice cup tea and a sit down.
Make yourself a nice cup of tea, sit down, and do some vacant staring out of the window. It’ll make a difference, you’ll see.