Pukka – Love
Happy Valentine”s Day tea friends! Today’s tea is Love from Pukka because that seemed appropriate.
The Feast of St. Valentine – that yearly celebration of tackiness and cliche – is named after, not one, but two Saints Valentine: Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni, both of whom were about in the 3rd Century and were put to death for their efforts to convert people to Christianity, which is a fairly tried and tested route to canonization.
These days its primary purpose seems to be to make people who are single – and wish they weren’t – feel a bit shit about themselves.
As you can probably infer, despite not actually being single I don’t hold much truck with Valentine’s Day. So it’s rather fitting that I have selected a tea that I know I won’t like.
Pukka’s Love is a chamomile-based herbal tisane. Chamomile is on my “teas to avoid” list because – and I appreciate that I might be in a minority in thinking this – it tastes like wee. The tea packet describes Love as a “heartwarming touch of rose, chamomile and lavender”. In fact, my first response on sipping this was “Eurggh! Liquorice.”
They kept that quiet on the blurb but, seriously, the chamomile should take second billing, with all the liquorice liquoricing up the place. The rose and lavender – which are two flavours I’m quite fond of – are barely to be seen at all.
Lest you think I’m not being romantic enough here, how about a bit of poetry?
One of the earliest references to Valentine’s Day in English Literature comes from Geoffrey Chaucer, who – presumably when taking a break from writing about pilgrims and making bum jokes – wrote:
“For this was on seynt Valentynes day
Whan every foul cometh there to chese his make
Of every kynde”
John Donne in 1613, wrote a poem which began “Hail Bishop Valentine whose day this is” and includes the lines, “The Husband Cock looks out and soon is sped, and meets his wife, which brings her feather bed.” (He’s talking about actual birds here, but he knew what he was doing. Some of Donne’s stuff is filthy.
And if your favourite love poem is the one that starts “Roses are red, violets are blue” (and whose isn’t?), then here for your delectation is the original version from the 18th century:
“The rose is red, the violet’s blue,
The honey’s sweet, and so are you.
Thou art my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,
And Fortune said it shou’d be you.”
There you go. You can send that poem to your true love today as a thoughtful gift. Or stick with the traditional flowers and chocolates, if you like. I wouldn’t recommend presenting the object of your affections with Pukka Love tea, though. It’s not actually very nice.
Today’s featured book is Deviant Love by Sigmund Freud, because I’m a sentimental romantic like that.
