How to trick people into thinking you make a really good cup of tea (Part 2)

Simple steps to achieve perceived tea making excellence

The art of making someone (let’s call him Nigel) believe that you are an excellent tea maker can be achieved through the application of some very simple steps before, during and after tea making.

Preparation

"Tea?"

• Simply offering to make him a cup of tea is a great way to start. If Nigel is not yet an established member of a tea round party, he may be pleasantly taken aback by your thoughtfulness to include him in your offering. He might pause for a moment, reflect on your goodwill, and then respond with, “why, yes. I would like a cup of tea, thank you kind lady / sir”. At this point, even if your tea IS abysmal, Nigel will think, “well at least s/he offered...unlike that offensive tea maker, who just makes their own and eats all the biscuits!"

• How do we go even further and make this gesture excellent? Well, as addressed in a previous post on the topic of tea, no-one likes to receive one that is begrudgingly made. We need to eradicate the possibility that Nigel feels that you are only offering him tea ‘because you have to’. So when you offer to make Nigel a brew, do it with a smile. Hand actions when offering (see picture) are also a great way of really conveying your enthusiasm in making great cups of tea. 
• 
  
• “So, you have milk, no sugar, right?” Check that you know their tea requirements. Even if you know already, make a point of checking (and smile lots). They will most certainly note the extra effort and there will be a positive expectancy that, “this is going to be a really good cup of tea”.
  
  

• Do not make half a cup of tea. There should be maximum of 1cm between the tea and the rim of the mug. Anything more than this is considered to be “half a cup of tea” and is unacceptable.
  
  

• Choose your mugs carefully. Teas made in mugs that are white inside will look much better (and usually require less brewing effort to accomplish the perfect tea glow). In contrast, teas made in mugs that are dark inside will struggle from the offset. Even an excellently brewed tea in this mug will appear to have a slight ‘water film’ around the edge. The receiver will judge it as poor before even confirming this through taste. To illustrate this, consider the teas pictured below. Both were made using standardised methods, yet Exhibit A is much more appealing than Exhibit B. (Admittedly, neither were particularly excellent at the time of this photo shoot).

Exhibit B: Water film appearance = perceived inadequacy

Delivery

• When delivering the cup of tea to Nigel and others, you need to convey that you have really enjoyed making it. Smiling is crucial here, but you can also verbally express your enjoyment as you put the tea on their desk by saying things like, “BOOM! Here’s ya tea!” and so on. Your own joy will make Nigel smile on the outside...and the inside.
  
  

• Every now and then, and especially with new receivers of tea, it’s good to be “tea-humble”. Point out a fault in your tea (if there aren't any, make it up). Examples: “Oh, it’s not dark enough” (even though it’s clearly brewed perfectly); “Oh, there’s not enough tea in there” (even when there is); “Oh sorry, I’m not sure it’s going to taste very good” (even when you know it will). Despite what you may think, taking this humble approach will actually work in your favour. Not only will people feel like you really care, but on the whole, most people will respond with, “No, no, it’s lovely, thank you! Really, it’s perfect, thanks!” After all, you have just gone out of your way to make them a cup of tea.
  
  

The role of tea maker can end here if you want it to. There are however, small optional additions that you can apply should you wish to in the post-delivery stage.

Post-delivery

• Check tea status informally – “So was that tea all right in the end?"
  
  

• Should you pass their desk on the way to the kitchen, take their empty mugs for them. This small submissive gesture will be much appreciated.
  
• 
  
• Offer biscuits. This is a very simple quick win. A separate post will cover a multitude of biscuits and their tea-dipping quality.

“Hang on a second, you've not actually told me the procedure for making a cup of tea!” No. This is just a guide of simple steps that can help you appear excellent (even if your tea making skills are actually mediocre). The optimum tea making procedure is subjective and largely influenced by upbringing and personal tea making experience. In order to establish the best process for making tea (is it teabag > water > milk? Or teabag > milk > water?) appropriate testing must be carried out.

How to trick people into thinking you make a really good cup of tea (Part 1)

The typical tea maker and their average tea.

In starting to detail how to trick people into thinking you make a really good cup of tea, I felt it was important to first explore the typical tea maker. After all, learning where you’re at is the first move in “stepping up” to where you want to be.

Making people tea has a very clear benefit. Simply put, if you make other people tea, they will feel obliged to make you tea in return.

Obligatory tea making has therefore become the office social norm, but the levels of effort applied will vary depending on the tea maker in question. Three categories of tea maker will be explored here. You will generally fall into one category, although it is most certain that you will identify with all three at some point in a working week. Some factors that might temporarily affect your tea making style include: your mood, how much you like the person you’re making tea for, how many teas you’re making in one round etc. In turn, the perception of your tea making ability may vary from recipient to recipient (with some thinking that your tea making abilities are generally poor, and others (hopefully most) thinking, “oh yeah, go on, I’ll definitely have another”).

So, what are these tea makers like?

1. The offensive tea makers

These are the people who have the tea making attitude of: “I’m just doing this because I want your tea later, but I don’t care whether you enjoy my tea or not...have you got any biscuits?” Note here their misuse of the TEA LAW: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a [bad] brew [from me] for a [good] brew [from you]”. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being “that is abysmal - someone take it away from me” and 10 being “fist-to-face amazing”), their teas will consistently range from 1 to 5. Once the label of “bad tea maker” has been noted, tested and confirmed with others, people will begin to conveniently time their tea making rounds to periods of said person’s absence or neglect to offer them tea altogether. The offender may notice this exclusion and offer you tea out of turn, as if to say “remember, I still drink tea, and this is the SECOND tea I’ve made you today, so you owe me”. On such occasions, it is inevitable that you will then feel obliged to make them a tea on your next round despite your own reluctance. This may also occur when it becomes embarrassingly obvious that you are making tea for everyone else except them.

If you find that you keep missing out on tea rounds and that people avoid eye contact with you as they peer over their own cup of glorious face-burning tea, it’s probably because you are, in general, an offensive tea maker.

2. The established “tea round party” makers

This type will robotically prepare your brew with an attitude of, “I’m making you tea because I sort of have to – you’re in the tea round party. Is that too milky? Probably...oh well - that’ll do”. These people just want to stay included in the tea round party. They have produced teas that mark fairly consistently in the upper half of the 1 – 10 scale, meaning that they are privy to information about how “so-and-so makes a really rubbish cup of tea” and how you’re planning to not include them in your next tea round. They are aware of the real risk of tea round party exclusion and therefore, will generally put in just enough effort to make an “all right” cuppa for you on a regular basis.

High quantity = lack of quality

Most people tend to fall into this category. As more people observe the benefit of being a tea round party member, you may notice the attempts of others to invade your tea round party. Particularly sneaky are those who try to cleverly present you with tea, and then take your obligatory return of tea as a sign of their acceptance into the group. Be warned that tea making efforts tend to decrease when tea round parties reach a membership level of 4+ people. If you are already at “tray level”, you may need to discuss your tea round party dividing options with the other founding members.

3. The affectionate tea makers

These tea makers often develop from a prolonged tea round party membership coupled with close friendship. The type of tea one can expect from the affectionate tea maker is an “average” to “good” cup of tea that would typically be marked 7 to 8. Anything marked 6 or below is a result of being unexpectedly rushed (they got called into a meeting) or improper lighting (making them unable to gauge tea colour). In short, a bad brew from this person will be a pure anomaly in their otherwise consistent tea making behaviour. In such cases, the affectionate tea maker will genuinely feel like they have let you down in some way and / or may offer to remake the tea. They will seek approval in your facial expressions and will be elated should they score a 9+. If you find yourself to be an affectionate tea maker for at least 3 people, you will find the transition to excellence much easier.

To set us up for part 2, I will now highlight the rare few who seem to delight in making the best tea they can make for you - regardless of your own persistent average efforts - catering for every requirement to ensure that you have the most enjoyable tea. You can spot such talented people by observing your own efforts when it’s your turn to make them tea. You might find that you endeavour to reciprocate the care and diligence that they must take over making yours. The thing is, they are good tea makers, but their excellence is just a clever ruse. In part 2, I’ll illustrate how you can follow suit and share in the glory of being perceived as an excellent tea maker.

TEA: I don’t want to make you one.

Drinking tea brings me great pleasure. Making tea for others and seeing their relief, joy, appreciation and gratitude also makes me very happy. In the first of what I imagine will become a series on such a topic, I want to explore the occasions where I just think: “you don’t deserve my tea!”

No-one wants to receive a begrudgingly made tea. Cast your mind back to the last time you brewed up for someone else with a less than enthusiastic attitude, and you will probably find that the recipient belonged to one of the three groups below:

1. The family member/s. Crucially, this is where tea is simply expected (every time you leave the sofa). You will often be asked to make tea at inconvenient times (“I’M ON THE PHONE!") and will usually be required to make more teas than the average ad break will allow. In the latter case, the cups are typically non-matching, of various shapes and sizes (meaning that only two can be transported safely at a time). Recipients will have preferred cups and will get angry should they receive ‘the wrong one’: “Oh I hate this cup, couldn’t you have given me the tall one with the chipped handle? It’s too thick on the rim, I can’t drink it”. 

Should you attempt to slyly make a brew just for yourself and get caught, they will cry: “Er, where’s mine? Oh that’s right, make yourself one why don’t you – don’t bother about anyone else!” If what you produce is less than average, you may be forced to remake or hear the words “I’ll make it my bloody self! – no, no – you can’t be bothered so I might as well do it”. Once settled with your own tea, a parent will tell you - “don’t put that on the carpet, it’ll leave a ring and you’ll knock it over. Use a coaster or rest it on this paper” (whilst flinging a newspaper across the room at you – which then probably falls apart mid-air, nearly knocking your tea over in the process). The whole experience is stressful and makes you dread the kettle popping. Tea drinking becomes private, like a secret pleasure (unless someone gets up off of the sofa (silently), in which case, you yell, “YES PLEASE! THE OLD MAN GREEN CUP!”)

2. Someone you live with. Tea is expected here, but if not received, will typically be met with ‘petty payback’ as oppose to an indignant outburst. Examples may include: making them a poor tea; making a point of not washing up their items; displacement of internal anger (be honest, you’re not in a mood because the kitchen’s a mess – it’s because I didn’t make you a cuppa half an hour ago). NOTE: With house-sharers, there is often too much ‘tea-choice’ in the cupboard, resulting in lengthy preparation and requirements for confirmation (“hang on, so do you want a peppermint tea or a ‘normal’ tea?”). This, in turn, leads to constant to-ing and fro-ing between cupboards and the fridge whilst you attempt to cater for their seemingly overwhelming demands. This effortful exchange is much softer than with the family member however, and any real feelings of inconvenience usually subside after drinking a cup of tea.

3. THAT person in the office who is always happy to receive tea, but rarely offers to make you a brew in return. You, seeking tea-buddies wherever you roam, will endeavour to produce the finest colouring and flavouring of tea within each cup you make them. After a few weeks, you’ll begin to notice that such efforts are not returned, and that, on the rare occasion that such a person makes YOU a cup of tea, it will always be unsatisfactory: “er...did the water even touch the teabag?” This will lead to feelings of annoyance, and typically, overtime, your own efforts will begin to diminish, resulting in a cycle of poor teas where no-one ever wins, and no-one ever enjoys the tea. 

In summary, a cup of tea will not taste as good when one of the ingredients is a bad attitude. The next in this series will give steps to overcome this: 

How to trick people into thinking you make a really good cup of tea.

Perfect Egg & Soldiers

It’s morning. The kettle is on. Bored of your usual breakfast choices, you start to peruse the cupboards for inspiration. Your eye catches some comical looking egg cups and your head says one thing: “ahhh yeaaah!”

Egg and soldiers (when done properly) will always start your day off brilliantly. Here is a guide to set you up for success. Please note: this is not for the apathetic egg-maker. 

PART 1: Getting started

Ingredients:
2x eggs (drawn on faces optional)
2x slices of bread
Butter (Lurpak or Clover is best)
Salt

Apparatus: 

- 1x pan

1. Place eggs in the pan and fill with water until they are 95% immersed and start to boil. (Optional: add salt to the water so that it “permeates through the shell”).

2. At EXACTLY the moment where the water starts to bubble, start timing FOUR MINUTES. It is absolutely CRUCIAL that your timing is accurate. Put your bread in the toaster at this point as well.

PART 2: The game begins

Treat this stage as a military operation. The eggs have started boiling, the bread is in the toaster. You have approximately 2 minutes to gather together the rest of your apparatus. You can, of course, do this in Part 1, but I enjoy the sense of urgency – it’s what I imagine being on Fun House would have been like.

Apparatus:
1x plate
2x egg cups (ignore jealous comments from house sharers: “why is your plate half covered with toys?!”)
1x butter knife
1x sharp knife
1x tea towel
1x tea spoon
1x egg-remover-from-the-pan tool

The toaster pops. 

3. Grab the toast out of the toaster and wave it around for 30 seconds to aid the cooling down process (cooler toast = more mum-lumps* of butter). 

4. Lavishly butter toast using the butter knife and use the sharp knife to create soldiers (5 per slice). 

5. Place soldiers on plate (by allowing the soldiers to stack slightly in a haphazard fashion, it will give the illusion that you have more soldiers, making the eating experience more enjoyable).

Four minutes should now be up.

6. Turn off heat. Use egg-remover-from-the-pan tool to fish out eggs and place them in the holders. 

7. Use tea towel to hold egg steady and use the sharp knife again to clean-cut the heads off of the eggs. 

Note: People have other methods for “neatly” beheading the eggs, but two points spring to mind here:

                1. It takes too long – the eggs are still cooking whilst you faff around.

                2. They tend to leave shards of shell everywhere: MESSY.

8. Reveal the golden runny eggs that make you fist the air and cry “YES!”  

9. Add lashings of salt.

Enjoy.

* Mum-lumps are the buttery product of motherly carelessness when buttering toast, but they taste amazing.

  

How to do 'Magic Eye'

It was recently brought to my attention (again) that my housemate Irene is unable to “do” magic eye puzzles. She has been so damaged by her previous failures in this area, that she has since adopted avoidance strategies to prevent being confronted (albeit, rarely) with future magic eye-related challenges. This feeling of inadequacy is understandable, given that she is usually successful in all areas of life (except making *truly* excellent tea / walking around the house at normal volumes / recycling everything - yes, even the "sa...cla! SACLA!" pesto jar, which is still in the wrong bin). Future posts may cover such topics.

It is therefore my wish to try and guide her into success, in the hope that in the privacy of her own room, away from perceived or actual ridicule / embarrassment / frustration, that she might "do an Aaliyah" and try again. 

So, despite what some have been told, magic eye success is not found by staring at the picture for 20 minutes solid without blinking. It is a very simple eye movement (which is not much different to adjusting to contact lenses when you put them on your eye...but she doesn't wear them, so...)

Preparation

1. Hold up your index fingers and point them at one another (so your index finger tips are 1cm apart), one SHATTER PROOF RULER'S distance from your face.

2. Look into the distance behind your fingers (do not look directly at your fingers). It should now look like there is a floating sausage inbetween your finger tips (note: it will feel a little bit like your eyes have slightly crossed at this point).

3. This is the key step to mastering magic eye. You need to slowly move your gaze from the distance, to focus on the sausage (although, if you try and focus on your fingers directly, you should find that the sausage illusion disappears). 

The same 'eye feelings' apply to the magic eye...

Challenge

1. Look at the picture (the more of your vision it takes up, the easier it will be - sit closer to the screen if necessary). 

2. Remember to look into the distance of the picture, allowing your eyes to adjust (in the same way that you saw the finger sausage, they will ever so slightly cross, but more in an accidental way, than a "I MUST FORCE THEM TO CROSS" way). 

3. At this point, you might think you've seen it (then probably got too cocky and lost it). The key step again, is to slowly move your focus to the centre of the picture (it will feel a little bit as though you are uncrossing your eyes). The picture should slowly become 3D and you should be able to focus on the image.

Conk

If this STILL doesn't work then I will try and explain again. If it does work, and you can text me the image that you see, then I'll buy you some Haribo (but not Tangtastics, 'cause they sort of hurt my face).


Final thought: "Sausage Eyes" is something completely different and unrelated to this post.

The Argos catalogue

One would probably think that there’s not much to say on the Argos catalogue, least of all to blog about, but I’d argue that it’s a great nostalgic magazine for three pretty specific reasons.

1. Skateboarding potential

It’s a great skateboard on carpeted floors (surprisingly so too, given the thickness. You’d expect the spine to tilt on the 'push off'...but it doesn’t - unlike the Yellow Pages). Worthy competitors include: Freemans catalogue, special offer leaflets and Spinechiller magazines.

2. The “Argos Catalogue Game” (2 players)

Set-up: 1x Argos catalogue open in front of players, sat side-by-side. 

Aim: Pick the item you would want on each page before the other person potentially picks it
Rules: Turn the page. Quickly point to what you would choose (if you could have anything). Fastest finger wins. In the case of a dispute, oldest player wins. Loser must pick an alternative item. Continue game until the last page or, until dinner is ready. Resume post-dinner.  

3. Parental misuse

Perhaps my favourite memory: compiling my wish list to Father Christmas using the Argos catalogue, and getting Dad to check it.

“Dad, here’s my list. Can you spell check it please?”
“That’s great Liv. You need to make it a bit easier for Father Christmas though – he's got a lot of kids to get presents for. So, what you need to do [cue Dad reaching for the Argos catalogue], is write the page number, product code, and the price next to each item on your list. Okay?”
“Okay Dad, thanks”. 

Geography IS fun.

Dear Mr Berry,

Despite what you may recall, I can assure you, I definitely was listening when you were teaching us about rivers. In fact, on the rare occasions that I find myself walking alongside one, I still mentally label the different parts in my head (although it's your booming voice that I hear, rather than my own: "SOURCE", "MEANDER", "MOUTH").

In the lead up to you telling me to "pay attention and stop doodling", I was actually 'doing Geography' - reflecting how Ireland is often left out when people 'cartoon up' the UK map. It is clearly a bear in mid-jump. 

I drew this for you in the hope that you will see it too.

With fond memories of your scariness,

Olivia