My son's are no longer teenagers, thank goodness, but they are and have always been tea drinkers. Two of them prefer Dutch tea, one prefers English tea, and has even converted his German wife to the delights of a good cup of English tea.
As teenagers they particularly enjoyed a cup of tea when they got in from school. They all learned early on how to make a good cuppa!
They all drink coffee as well, and various fizzy drinks, though nothing like Red Bull or energy drinks.

Anything happens the kettle is put on for a comforting/welcoming/consoling even celebratory cup of tea. Coffee and fizzy drinks just don't have that comfort value to them.

Mostly, if the streets of my nearest town on the last days of Schools are anything to go by, the class that joins the Bullingdon or Piers Gaveston.>>>

Thay have proper schools in the Cotswolds now? When did that happen?

But yes, we live on tea - and that's all generations. We even got the Indians hooked on it (bet you didn't know that!)

Tea to you Chai to them

English also Chinese hooked on opium

"Thay have proper schools in the Cotswolds now?"

Did you really go through however many years it was at North Hampshire Comp and not learn what Schools (as opposed to schools) are? Aren't you supposed to be a Friend of Dave.

Now I know what that rumbling noise was at the last Wickham parish church concert. The town's most illustrious son not just turning in his grave but wanting his money back on - and here's the hint - BOTH his endowments.

flanneur.co.uk should talk about 'proper schools' - what with his dicey educational background in the slums of Liverpool.

Q - wonder if flanneur.co.uk still speaks with a Liverpiddlian accent - if so he would be the only Liverpoodle ex-pat who does, i hear.

Ah, Old Bill. But he's buried in Winchester, not Wickham (but I suppose if he were spinning quickly enough it could set up an earth tremour which could travel the distance)

If nothing else he did give the world the magnificent Sir Ranulph Ffeines so for that alone we should be grateful.

ps: Sir Ranulph on Top Gear:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jv3Fo48wbo

Tea to you Chai to them>>>>

They didn't really touch the stuff until we rocked up and started growing it there.

At any meaningful level the British introduced the Indians to tea - not the other way round (which most people would think)

Interesting tangent this tea stuff

yeh i may have thought Indians had tea before the British came

so i guess tea came from China to England then to India - not the actual bushes of course but the taste for tea

Brits were of course probably first just looking for a place to grow cheap tea with slave labor and then profited off the locals by hooking them on tea.

anyway if you ever take a train in India at every station there is a chorus of "Tea, chai, tea, chai, tea, chai" from the mob of locals selling tea in earthen disposable cups, thrusting it through the windows. I still have that 'tea, chai' chant branded in my failing mind.

Flanner is not talking about "proper schools". He's talking about "the end of Schools". It's forgiveable that a colonial doesn't understand the difference: depressing that someone schooled at what was once Britain's most intellectually distinguished school after the Direct Grants doesn't.

No-one who'd gone to Westminster, St Paul's, Man Gram or Slough Secondary Mod would make so crass an error. That's why the William artefacts still preserved in the south nave of his home town church (not everything moved to downtown Winchester) got upset.

It was mainly the Scots side of my family out of Hong-Kong who pushed opium on the chinese for silver not the English side

Brits were of course probably first just looking for a place to grow cheap tea with slave labor and then profited off the locals by hooking them on tea.>>>>

Tell me more about this slavery in India thing.....

I REALLY must get hold of an American history textbook - because they clearly bear no resemblence to anyone else's

Slavery still is the fate of many low-caste folks in an India whose caste system was encourage by the English as a way to subdue them and have em grow cheap tea for the chattering classes back home.

Oh for f*ck's sake please try and get over your hatred for the english upper classes/Empire.

What you have written is wrong at every level and there really is no excuse for this level of ignorance.

If you don't know about something - shut up. Otherwise you just increase the size of the dunce's cap in my mental image of you.

The Dalits were never used as tea growers. There was no slavery in India under the Raj. We also got rid of Suti - but no doubt you're in favour of that.

We also got rid of Suti - but no doubt you're in favour of that.>

Only for royal families

>>Only for royal families<<

Even for Mrs Simpson-As-Was?

The dear Ole Queen Mum would gleefully have chucked her on the pyre herself.

That would have been corking telly - with yer man Dimbleby commentating.

To be fair to the British Empire i think that their treatment of colonials in India was much better than that of most colonial powers like the French, Dutch, Belgians, etc.

And generally everywhere i think - that does not make them Gods but less worse than others.

How the heck the British could subdue and dominated the Indian sub-continent is really mind boggling

How the heck the British could subdue and dominated the Indian sub-continent is really mind boggling>>>

And we did it with less people than are employed in our own civil service now.

And to think that there was no Pakistan and thus the Raj had to deal with the animosities between Muslem and Hindu that is raging today.

I guess co-opting the local Marahajas was crucial - but in any case British India was a testimony to British ingenuity.

And when they left all Hell broke out.

>>the Raj had to deal with the animosities between Muslem and Hindu that is raging today<<

I'm not sure that's entirely true. There are plenty of people who will argue that it was partition - and particularly the speed of the final decision-making - that made things worse.