I love tea. I grew up with tea, for breakfast, a between meal treat, an after dinner relaxer, and, of course, whenever we had company.

Tea is a fixer, especially when things get a little out of hand – like the day, many years ago when my cousin invited a girl from school to hang out with us at my cousins' house. We didn’t know this girl very well, or that she had some “issues” which made her very high strung. What should have been a fun afternoon turned into a rowdy episode that spilled out on the front lawn.

Our attempts to get things under control were to no avail, so I leapt to my feet and yelled, “Wait! I’ll go make some tea!”

A few minutes later my cousin came in the front door, slamming it behind her and said, “Tea? You left me out there with that crazy girl to make tea?”

“Well,” I pointed out, “she went home didn’t she?”

A typically British (or Irish) reaction, I would learn as I got older.

As one character in the well-loved British TV series, Midsomer Murders, said, “There's only one way to deal with other people's unpleasantness. Plenty of hot tea.”

Maybe my love of tea is one of the reasons I’m drawn to British mystery and detective shows. Only in Britain would the tea kettle go on every time the police show up at someone’s home to ask questions of potential suspects.

Ever wonder why Brits are so obsessed with tea? Check out this delightful video … after you’ve made yourself a delicious cup of tea, of course.

You might need it to read this great article on the decline of tea in Britain (really!), the rise of coffee and the influence of youth on the deteriorating tradition … oh, and the quickly rising interest in tea in the US.

In the midst of all this change, and the absolutely dreary state of affairs usually revealed on the morning news, remember the wisdom of Terri Guillemets: "A crisis pauses during tea."