Tea Bag Nation

Having grown up in Ireland, I always remember the mornings. Particularly the breakfasts in the mornings and in particular the tea with the breakfast in the mornings. I loved the feel and the look of those leaves dried somewhere in a foreign sun and crunchy, and the sound of them hitting the bottom of the pot. Three heaping tea spoons thrown in and then there was the water— straight from the Dublin mountains to the kettle where it would boil hissing and spitting like a petulant teenager. She always held it at a distance for the effect. It would come cascading down from the spout in a torrent, with the steam escaping from all sides. And then for a few moments anyway—silence. It would draw. The stuff was so precious you would put a coat on it in the winter. A little cosy.
Perhaps there was more time then. I don't know. They say there was.
The tea bag was of course a most brilliant invention. They could simply recycle all the inferior tea that they couldn't otherwise sell, stuff it into a little bag, put it in a box and sell it to us. And like fools we drank even more of the insipid stuff.