tea for every (phlegmy) situation

(a very phlegmatic statue in Munich)

There's been a lot of talk about phlegmatic people in my little world lately, and although I've attempted to portray myself as such, I'm not actually allergic to anything that I know of. That was the meaning of the word phlegmatic that was used. Someone with a lot of phlegm. Someone whose allergies had got the better of him or her (I think it was a her in this case).

I was thinking of the Four Temperaments meaning of phlegmatic. The one that's '...receptive and shy and often prefer stability to uncertainty and change...', but then I realised that the phlegmatic person in question was coughing and wheezing and generally being a nuisance in the office. Her kindness was not the problem here.

I should really go back to the beginning of this story. Lisa Galaviz (@lgalaviz) describes it all rather concisely in her blogpost How to Create Drama in your Life and Workplace. And if you got down to the bottom of the post, you know as well as I do that Cara in Cleveland (@zippy219) won Drama Day and did so rather convincingly.

So the question now is: What tea is best to mask the taste of Allegra? Apparently it's got quite a bitter taste, and we don't want it to be detected.

I asked Erik Kennedy (@thetearooms) what tea he would recommend for the job. I asked him partially because he's a very knowledgeable chap, but also because he was there. 99% of life is showing up. Let that be a lesson to you.

His answer? A nice Japanese Sencha. Strong enough that you won't even notice the bitter medicine-y taste of the Antihistamine. He actually didn't specify whether the Sencha should come from Japan or China, but I know some of you loathe Japanese tea as a general rule. It's my responsibility to mention it at every opportunity.

Right after his wonderful recommendation, Erik said that for this purpose he'd actually use fruit juice. But this isn't a fruit juice blog. You'll have to go somewhere else for that sort of information. This is a tea blog. We're giving unsuspecting people medication that they may or may not need in their tea, thank you.

One last thing before I leave you and go brew some more tea sans medicine. There's been quite a lot of traffic lately to my teablog from some unsavoury countries and places. I don't know exactly what you're doing here, but it better be tea-related. No funny business, eh? You hear that Newfoundland and Labrador? Don't make me come over there.