You are either a connoisseur or, whisper it, of a certain mature age if you use loose tea. Believe it or not, there was a time when no one in this country had ever heard of a tea bag - it was still an American aberration. Today we all use them - well almost all. Up to the mid-1950s we used loose tea only, the leaves of which were much bigger than the fine, almost powdery type we now use. Tea bags are today's short cut to making tea for, as one senior taster loved to tell us in the tea trade, they "give a thicker liquor, quicker". But large-leaf tea - referred to as toenail tea - requires more care and time to make. Indeed, it's almost a forgotten ritual.
In bygone days standards of hygiene when blending teas could best be described as primitive. Only the big tea houses had a blending drum. Elsewhere, steel plates were placed on the floor, the tea chests were emptied on to them and a few men, using wide wooden shovels, tossed the teas about until they were fully blended. Heavy tea dust covered everything and everybody. What effect this dust had on their health was never considered, though many of these men lived to a ripe old age.
Mysterious finds
But the actual blending, despite its backbreaking demands, threw up the occasional pleasant surprise. It was like an Aladdin's cave; we never knew what mysterious finds might be tipped out of the tea chests. For reasons no one could explain, teas from Assam in India offered up the most excitement. Over the years one of the older blenders had collected a wide array of insects in an old biscuit tin, the identity of which none of us knew, but they were all very foreign to us. Some of these exotic, multicoloured creatures had claws, some had tails, some were big, most were small; thankfully they were all very dead, and we were absolutely fascinated by them. It was the nearest some of us would ever get to faraway places with strange-sounding names. It felt as though a little piece of Darjeeling had come into our humdrum lives. Any new discovery brightened our day.
We once struck gold with a find of such rarity that even the office staff came up to gaze in awe at our treasure. The snake was almost four feet long, of assorted colours and presumed dead, though none of us was sufficiently brave to poke it to see if it was still alive. Those unblinking beady eyes seemed to outstare us. When eventually we found the Dutch courage to touch it, the snake felt surprisingly dry and slightly warm, not the wet slippery creature we had expected.
But the real excitement was reserved for the day we went stalking live animals. A few pallet-loads of tea had been brought up from the docks and taken directly to the top loft for sorting and stacking. Just as we came to the last few chests, one of the men jumped in the air letting loose a litany of obscenities. Two small creatures - scorpions, it transpired - took off, tails up, in opposite directions at surprising speed. We gave chase, each shouting at the other to be careful not to touch them. It took half-an-hour to finally impound them in a jam jar. Perhaps we simply tired them out, but they came quietly in the end. After keeping them in comfortable captivity for 24 hours, not knowing what to do with them, we reluctantly rang the zoo, which sent a man to take them away. Did they live, did they breed, did they die? We never heard. Our noble gesture to wildlife preservation went unnoticed and certainly unrewarded. We had hoped at least to make the evening papers.
Bag of stones
Over time we came across many hammers buried in the tea, which we used, as we seemed to lose as many as we found. There was also the occasional bag of stones, usually buried well down. These, presumably, were slipped in to keep the weights correct and thereby not draw attention to the stolen shortfall. Smart thinking. Pens and pencils were standard finds and occasionally a mug or cup, though never a saucer.
But by far the most interesting discoveries were sheets of newspaper, of which there was never a shortage. They proved more engrossing than lifting an old carpet at home and having a good nostalgic read. (Bolger's Bras 3s/11d!) The papers, usually gone yellow and generally printed in English, came from Calcutta, Colombo and Djakarta. Weddings, deaths, sales, cricket notes, gardening notes, church notes, gossip - all made riveting reading.
English language
The best enjoyment was to be found in the ads: "Fifteen rickshaws for immediate hire, apply Ranjah Bhattacharyya, Monday morning only". But it was the use, misuse, and even abuse of the English language that was the true delight. Even then it seemed as though these people lived in an older, forgotten time. The style of writing had a certain serenity to it, a quaintness that smacked of charming innocence. It seemed of another time, another century. Their world somehow appeared to be a more tranquil and peaceful place.
Nowadays, even the once slumbering tea trade is up to speed. Teas are automatically packed and weighed into large multi-ply paper sacks (tea chests are almost a thing of the past), palletised into containers, and blended and packed on such sophisticated machines that even a tiger's tooth would not pass through undetected. The excitement of an unexpected, colourful visitor from abroad has long gone, for modern technology is today so streamlined that to see any exotic creature you must go on safari or to the zoo. But at least the snakes there are guaranteed to be alive.