They Looked At Me Like I'd Asked For A Pint Of Diesel: My Quest For A Simple Builders Tea In Modern London

By Dr. Arabella Montrose-Hicks | Nonsense Watch UK

I should preface this by saying I am not, by nature, a difficult person. I queue patiently. I say thank you to bus drivers. I have, on more than one occasion, apologised to a lamppost after walking into it. I am, in other words, exactly the sort of mild-mannered British citizen who should be able to walk into a café and emerge, within a reasonable timeframe, clutching a hot beverage without suffering what I can only describe as a low-grade identity crisis.

And yet.

The Scene Of The Crime

The establishment in question — I shall not name it, partly out of legal caution and partly because it is indistinguishable from every other coffee shop that has colonised London like a particularly stylish fungus — occupied a railway arch in what was, until approximately eighteen months ago, a functioning tyre repair garage. The exposed brickwork had been tastefully preserved. A neon sign read GOOD VIBES ONLY in a font that cost someone a lot of money to make look like it didn't. There were no prices displayed anywhere visible to the human eye.

I approached the counter, which was made of reclaimed wood and the spiritual energy of someone who has completed a silent retreat in Oaxaca.

"A builders tea, please," I said. Cheerfully. Normally. As a person.

The young man behind the counter — his name, I would later learn from his tote bag, was Cosmo — did not immediately respond. He tilted his head. He did it slowly, the way a Golden Retriever does when it hears a strange noise, except a Golden Retriever would not follow this with a visible micro-wince.

"So... tea," he said, in the tone of a hostage negotiator buying time.

"Yes," I confirmed. "Tea. Builder's. Strong, dash of milk, no sugar."

Cosmo reached beneath the counter and produced an iPad on a little stand, which he rotated to face me. "So we have our full hot drinks menu here," he said, gesturing at what appeared to be a doctoral thesis on the subject of water temperature and origin stories.

The Menu. Oh, The Menu.

I will not reproduce the full contents of the QR-code menu — my therapist has advised against it — but I can report that it contained forty-seven options, of which approximately three involved anything a person born before 1995 might recognise as tea. Each entry was accompanied by a brief paragraph of prose that read like the beverage had been through something. Our Yunnan Golden Tip, one entry breathed, carries notes of dried apricot and a long, contemplative finish. I did not want a contemplative finish. I wanted a mug and a biscuit.

There was, I noted, no builders tea. There was no standard breakfast tea of any kind. There was, however, a "British Morning Ritual" listed at £6.40, which I briefly mistook for hope before reading the small print and discovering it contained pu-erh and "a whisper of bergamot."

I looked up from the iPad. Cosmo was waiting, with the patient expression of someone who has had this conversation before and has developed coping mechanisms.

"Do you just have... normal tea?" I asked. "Yorkshire, PG Tips, a Tetley bag in hot water with milk. Cow's milk," I added, and I am not ashamed to say I braced myself.

The wince arrived on schedule.

The Milk Situation

Let me be clear: I have nothing against oat milk. I have nothing against almond milk, soy milk, or whatever is currently being extracted from cashews. People's dietary requirements are their own business and I respect them entirely. What I object to is the specific facial expression that Cosmo deployed upon hearing the word 'milk' — unmodified, unqualified, just milk — which suggested I had wandered in and requested that he source me a live ferret.

"We have oat, almond, soy, coconut, macadamia, and barista-blend oat," he said.

"What's the difference between oat and barista-blend oat?"

A pause that contained multitudes. "The barista-blend has a higher fat content so it froths better."

"I don't want froth," I said. "I want tea. With milk. From a cow."

Cosmo consulted, briefly, with a colleague whose name I did not catch but who was wearing dungarees and an expression of mild philosophical concern. They conferred in low tones. I stood there, a forty-three-year-old woman, being made to feel like a heritage act.

The Deconstructed Finale

"So we don't actually carry dairy," Cosmo eventually reported, returning with the gravity of a man delivering difficult news, "but what I can offer you is our deconstructed chai experience? It's warming, it's got that kind of... robustness you might be looking for, and we serve it with oat milk on the side so you control the pour."

Reader, I stood there for a moment in silence.

The deconstructed chai experience. The deconstructed chai experience. I had come in for a cup of tea that has sustained this nation through wars, power cuts, family arguments and the entire run of EastEnders, and I was being offered a deconstructed chai experience at what I can only assume was north of seven pounds.

This, I thought, is Britain now. The builders tea — honest, unpretentious, democratically brown — has been rebranded out of existence. We have been upsold, workshopped and made to feel vaguely embarrassed about our own preferences in our own country. The humble teabag, that tiny cloth parcel of national identity, has been quietly escorted from the premises and replaced with a QR code and a young man named Cosmo who experiences dairy as a personal affront.

I declined the deconstructed chai experience.

I went to Greggs.

They had tea. It was seventy-five pence. It came in a polystyrene cup and it tasted, as all builders teas should, of warmth and the complete absence of pretension. I sat on a wall outside and drank it, and I have never felt more patriotic in my life.

Dr. Arabella Montrose-Hicks is a senior contributor at Nonsense Watch UK. She takes her tea strong, with milk — the dairy kind — and she will not be apologising for it.