In Britain, offering someone a cup of tea is rarely about the tea.
1The British drink about one hundred million cups of tea every day. That is a lot of tea, and very little of it is about being thirsty. Tea arrives when there is good news, when there is bad news, and above all when nobody knows what to say.
2Tea came from China in the seventeenth century and was, at first, extremely expensive. Rich families kept it in a locked box. Then the prices fell, and by the nineteenth century workers were drinking it too, with sugar and milk, in the middle of the afternoon.
3The milk has its own history. Early cups were made of thin porcelain that could crack with very hot liquid, so people poured a little cold milk in first. The cups are stronger now, but the habit stayed, and people still argue about which goes into the cup first.
4If a British friend says I will put the kettle on, it usually means something more than a hot drink. It means sit down, and I am listening. That is why the offer arrives in a hospital corridor, after an argument, or when somebody has simply had a bad day.
The kettle is not an appliance. It is a sentence.
