Nearly 250 years after the Boston Tea Party, the British ambassador in Washington and her US counterpart in London are going at it over how to make a decent hot drink. And by Wednesday evening, the conflict was spilling over into mainland Europe.
Bloody 2020, can it get any worse..
Like many tense diplomatic standoffs, it began with a deliberate provocation. An American TikTok user going by the name of Michelle from North Carolina posted a video showing how to make what she describes as “hot tea”, which entails mixing milk with powdered lemonade, cinnamon, cloves, sugar and Tang, which turns out to be a soft drink.
Tang? What devilry is this?
As an afterthought she dunked a teabag, and then put the whole thing in the microwave.
Microwave, what is wrong with you people?
Her subsequent attempt at “British tea” involved cold water first. The British internet lost its marbles.
Jesus wept. I actually saw this video, she bunged it all in the microwave as usual and it.. was.. fucked.. up..
Inevitably, Dame Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to Washington – who holds an MSc in international strategy and diplomacy from the LSE, has served in the Foreign Office for 39 years and is a former president of the UN security council - was obliged to weigh in.
She posted a viral video of her own on Monday, explaining that “the Anglo-American relationship is defined by tea”, a reference to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 that eventually led to US independence.
Then, in what Twitter banter enthusiasts viewed as a thrilling escalation, she threw to three branches of the armed forces, who took it in turns to demonstrate how to make what one Royal Navy sailor called a “proper British cup of tea”.
Nice little coded threat of force there Ambassador, you spoil us..
The US ambassador in London, Woody Johnson, who recognised the impossibility of his position on the tea front and quickly shifted his forces to a classic British weakness: coffee.
“I’m going to make an American cup of coffee, the way I make it every day, responding to Ambassador Pierce’s perfect cup of tea and her instructions,”.
Okay..
He proceeded to pour a bottle of water into a kettle, stick a spoon of instant coffee in a mug, splash in some milk and say “have a nice day”.
WTF.. hear that Italians.. that's proper coffee.
But there may now be questions as to whether he had committed a serious strategic error, by making, to put it bluntly, what looked like a terrible cup of coffee. On Wednesday evening, a source at the Italian embassy asked for a view on the US video replied: “What he made was American coffee. And I stress... American coffee.”
We don't screw around with, like, hotdogs Americans so why are you so adamant in screwing up our tea, was Boston not enough, what is wrong with you people? When did you lose all sense of values by using a microwave to make tea for god's sake?
However, otherwise, what is you favourite tea - since WFH I've been gazzumping gallons of good old Breakfast Tea where I substitute sugar with a drop or two of honey. Here in HK iced lemon tea is very popular too. When I lived in India I did love those big pots of masala chai.
What about you, please indicate if you're American and therefore we can dismiss your opinion off the bat.
