Female Avatars

This is a PSA for (usually) American authors writing British characters, from a Brit.

The standard British tea is English Breakfast Tea, sold by brands like Yorkshire Tea, and PG tips, or Barry’s if you’re Irish. It is NOT Earl Grey. In fact, it’s quite unusual for someone to actually drink Earl Grey. The two teas are not interchangeable.

If someone offers you a cup of tea, they mean English breakfast - if they have something other than English breakfast, they will specify. Most British households will keep teabags of English breakfast tea and instant coffee as standard (even if they personally don’t like it, it’s usually polite to keep it to offer to guests).

Having worked in a coffee shop, in my experience, it is only middle class people (and usually white women) who order Earl Grey teas, whereas English breakfast is far more universal. A ‘builder’s tea’ - aka a strong cup of English breakfast with very little milk - is commonly associated with working class men, but can equally be enjoyed by everyone (like me). If someone orders a black tea, this will usually mean an English breakfast tea without milk, as opposed to the type of tea. Making a weak cup of tea which has not been allowed to brew for long enough or which has too much milk will result in being mocked, and offering a weak tea to guests is very rude.

Along a similar vein, we do not have cream/creamer in our coffees here. For both tea and coffee, the usual options are milk, sugar, or sweeteners. I live in London and yet I’ve never even seen coffee creamer in the fridge of Tesco.

Of course, I am sure that there are people who prefer Earl Grey and keep it stocked in their homes. Equally, I’m sure there’s someone who went to America and now orders coffee creamer from Amazon or something, but that is the 0.01% of the population. Not the majority.

Yes, this is a weird reader pet peeve of mine because it really takes away from the realism of the story. So small and yet so telling😂

Thank you for reading my rant! If you have any more questions, please ask. Now go forth and write accurate Brits!

The dream

Tea, cake, and Narnia, in the Lamb and Flag, Oxford, one of the pubs where the Inklings (the writing group of Tolkien and CS Lewis) would meet and write.

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I knew all of these names individually but I never realised how insane they sound put together. Someone who doesn’t know Horace please make a story using these as the chapter names.

So not to add to the pain of Qui but you know how previously Jackie was laughing about picturing Shauna making her ear a small coffin and next thing you know Shauna is putting together random rocks as a makeshift tomb...

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Agamemnon: I didn't want to fight with Achilles, I just wanted to tell him to fuck off

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HEY SO APPARENTLY REDDIT HAS A MEGATHREAD OF SAFE PIRACY WEBSITES?

Megathread link

Movies, sports, games, books, etc. Whenever something is discovered to be a malware risk, it gets taken off the list.

Reddit is good sometimes. At least r/Piracy is.

some twat just insulted my dead mum, im about to run away to london and join a pickpocketing ring, but first, musical number