On drinks and Muswell Hillbillies

 September 27, 2022

8:20 pm

Have a Cuppa Tea

Behind their backs, I'd like to say to the The Kinks that their Muswell Hillbillies album is what's keeping me sane these days. Have a Cuppa Tea, in particular, is giving me the motivation to face the rest of the day with a smile on my face despite the stress of my day job and school works. The album is one that explores the realities of living in a fast changing world where people can't keep up with all that's happening right before their eyes ( aka the story of my peers and I). Despite the songs being written 50 years ago, it surprises me that the songs and the characters in those songs are very much like the people I know and encounter daily. In fact, the songs are starting to be a reality, not just for those lads and lasses in the city, but also for those living in provinces and rural areas where the tentacles of progress and modernity are starting to creep in. 

This is not to say that modernity is an evil that should be stopped at all cost. Modernity is a result of change and man's evolution as species. It represents all the things that humanity have accomplished, and shows all the possibilities that we can achieve in the coming years. However, we have to acknowledge that modernity is a two-edged sword. It has its positive and negative effects. In the Muswell Hillbillies album, the negative sides of modernity were shown through the experiences of people who were becoming more paranoid and alienated in their community. We have to acknowledge that these consequences of modernity, although might not be affecting you personally, are the realities that other people are experiencing. There are those who are living in these realities, and their experiences should be heard in order for us to better understand the world we are living in. 

@@@

I am not a tea nor a coffee-dependent person, but during my first year as a woking gal, I had this weird phase which involved buying boxes of tea.  I bought boxes of different sorts of tea- berry tea (my favourite!), chamomile tea (a so-so tea), mint tea (love the packaging, hated its taste), and black tea (my least favourite)- because I was watching this show where the main character was drinking tea. I was even contemplating on buying a box of earl grey (again because of the said show), and I'm glad I didn't. After all, half of those poor tea bags weren't consumed because I forgot they existed until it was the middle of pandemic and I was doing a general cleaning of our kitchen cabinets.

 No matter how much I try to bury that weird phase of my life, it resurfaces every now and then, especially when I see boxes of tea in our local supermarket. Seeing boxes of tea in the long isles of the supermarket reminds me of my impulsiveness every.single.time. It seems that what people say about our past haunting our present is definitely true. 

Lessons learned: 

1. Don't buy boxes of tea if you're not 100% sure that you'll drink tea. 

2. Don't buy boxes of tea just because this character on TV loves tea.