Trendy Traditionalists (1/3) By Jo Allison

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

Lost your patriotic sense of what it means to be British? Do not despair. As Gordon Brown urges us to celebrate Britain, Jo Allison re-introduces us to our classically cool English Heritage, from traditional tea to quaint seaside holidays. Queuing is undoubtedly an extremely English, if somewhat boring occurrence. However, it can be rather enlightening. While queuing in the Post Office, I was intently eavesdropping on the conversation of an uber-trendy, fashionably clad twenty-something couple. Their topic of conversation hit me as strange. Tea. The girl was re-laying a visit to Sketch Tea Parlour in London, and raving about the cakes and excellent green tea.

To me, two things seemed strange, a) that this seemingly old-fashioned Tea Shoppe was somehow cool, and b) that is was in central London, not tucked away down a cobbled street in Yorkshire. However, further investigations proved I was mistaken.

Not only is tea a trendy anti-Starbucks alternative, favoured by many an art student, (who according to Assistant Manager at Sketch, Nicholas Fischer, ..party hard at the weekend and then detox with green tea throughout the week) it is also beneficial for mind, body, soul and street cred. As one looks more deeply into the subject of contradictory coolness, it appears that just about all fussy, traditional Englishisms are now classically cool. Swedish researchers have recently hailed this best-loved cure for all ailments and most traditional of English drinks as good ovary cancer prevention.

Six thousand women took part in a study into tea and over three hundred of these women were diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

However, those women who drank two or more cups of tea a day had 46% less risk. Coffee however, had no impact on the study, proving once and for all a scientific reason why you should ditch the mass-produced, caffeine-overloaded and over-priced Starbucks and stick to the local English tearoom. A visit to the opulent Sketch Tea Room illustrates tea's popularity perfectly, and with celebrities such as Billy Zane, Jude Law and Kelly Brooke all frequenting the parlour it's fashionable too.

On an average day, by five o'clock Britain has sipped over one hundred million cups of tea, according to the UK Tea Council's Internet Tea Counter. The Executive Chairman of the Tea Council, William Gorman suggests, tea has always been popular...four or five years ago, popularity was driven by interest of celebrities. We did a web chat with Kate Moss and she drinks twelve cups of tea a day. It seems strange then that there is a lack of traditional tea shops in London.

Gorman suggests this could be because of the economics, running a tea room is very difficult. But there is hope for the local shop, ..there will be more and more tea shops opening in London, Yauatcha (another fashionable tea shop) opened after us...people think of tea as a posh English drink, and so they feel posh coming here for afternoon tea, commented Fischer at Sketch.

So, where do these new-found traditionalists slurp their cups of Cha? In conventionally English abodes of course, preferably in Prince Charles's Poundbury, or in some other equally English countryside dwelling. Our Prince seemed to have the correct English ideas about architecture in the 1980's. Why has everything got to be vertical, straight, unbending, only at right angles and functional, he asked at the time.

Continued ... Next Page (2/3)

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