A nice cup of tea

The expression a nice cup of tea, aka "a cuppa" neatly sums up a Briton's approach to Life and its occasional tribulation. It's the only obvious outcome of "putting the kettle on", another quintessential and time-honoured British tradition.

Although the original tea consumed, China tea, was very much for the upper classes, being prohibitively expensive to others, to the average Briton, it usually means Indian tea, dark and strong, drunk with milk. Myths abound as to the "correct" way of preparing it, but the only real way is to make it in a teapot. Tea bags, whether rectangular, circular or pyramidal, are an aberration invented by the Yanks.

And of course, then there was the Boston Tea Party, but that's another story.