Do You Want Ice With That?

And so we have seen off another Winter Olympics, or "nationalism on ice" as the New York Times put it last week.

Of course, it's all about the taking part, not the winning. But those of us who are a little partial to winning now and again can't help noticing that Team GB (which should obviously be Team UK, but let's leave that for another time) ended with a single (silver) medal in the women's Skeleton. I don't want for a minute to diss (as young folks say these days) the brilliant achievement of Shelley Rudman, but the fact of the matter is that the British sporting history books will remember her medal principally for its lack of company.

In case you hadn't spotted this already, one silver medal put us in joint 21st place in the medal table, alongside Belarus, Bulgaria and Slovakia. Despite that, the post-Games quote from the head of the British Olympic team, as reported by the BBC, was: "Overall, we are delighted. But we need to scratch below the surface of the medals table. There is no place for complacency". How precisely, I wonder, does one scratch below the surface of a solitary medal?

In stark contrast, the US team performance - 2nd place overall with 25 medals in total, 9 of them gold - has received a mixed reception here. The American approach is to expect to win and not to settle for anything else.

OK, it's not exactly a level playing field to compare Team GB/UK with Team USA. But is there any reason why we shouldn't compare ourselves with near neighbours of a similar size, such as France and the Netherlands? They finished in joint tenth with 9 medals each, 3 of which were gold.

In discussing this with my kids at the weekend, they wanted to know what the Skeleton was exactly. Once I had fed them with the idea of sliding down the bobsleigh track on something like a tea tray, they suggested that it might be more interesting if the competitors actually had to make tea at the top of the course (see my message of 18 February), and then scored points for the amount of tea that remained un-spilled on arrival at the bottom. There, I thought, was an event where the UK could hit gold.

That led me to wondering whether our chances could be improved by other tweaks to the make-up of the events. For example, the Biathlon (cross-country skiing and shooting) might be problematic, but what about the Unathlon, in which we could do just one event that we were good at, such as curling? On second thoughts, that would just be curling, wouldn't it?

Better still, then, how about Unathlon Freestyle, in which each country could choose a different event and compete against the others doing what it was best at? OK, the scoring would be rather tricky. But we could send David Beckham to represent Team UK in the ancient winter discipline of taking free kicks from just outside the penalty area. On ice, of course.

The Only Teapot in North America

To misquote entirely the great Daffyd Thomas: "Mine is the only teapot in the village". In fact, it may be worse than that. It may be that mine is the only teapot in North America.

In the six months I have now lived in the US, I have seen only one teapot, and it's the one that sailed across the Atlantic with the rest of our belongings a few weeks before we arrived.

Now, you might think that it doesn't really matter how many teapots there are in North America. You might think that it's perfectly acceptable for the world's only superpower to be populated by non-tea drinkers, or at best people who think making tea involves dangling a tiny bag of Lipton's Yellow Label on the end of a string in the vicinity of a cup of hot water. Shame on you.

Consider this. The very existence of this country as an independent entity, the very gathering together of the collection of states which remains by far the most influential nation on the planet, was of course instigated by an argument with the British - about tea. Every American school child learns the story, and knows how it sparked a chain of events which led to the War of Independence. Why, then, do none of them have any idea how to make tea, or how to drink it?

Lest you think I'm exaggerating, a couple of examples from my highly scientific survery conducted over the past six months.

Whenever one asks for "tea" or, heaven forbid, "a cup of tea" from someone in the beverage service industry here, I can guarantee you that there will only be one of two reactions. The first is "Huh?", in which case one repeats the question until one arrives at the second possible reaction, which is "Hot tea"?

Now, I can't tell you how many times I've longed to say: "No, I'd like you to make it with stone-cold water, please, because I'm going to warm it up later by straining it numerous times through my rancid socks".

Needless to say, I don't say that. I say something more along the lines of "Yes, hot tea, please".

OK, I know there is such a thing as iced tea. But that's not the same thing as "'tea", is it? If I wanted iced tea, which I sometimes do, I'd ask for it by name.

Example number two requires me to brief against myself, as political types say. My wife claims to have spotted a second teapot in North America. But, in mitigation, I would point out that (i) I didn't see it myself, so it might not be true, & (ii) it was apparently a small Chinese type of pot, therefore not really the same thing.

Anyway, the mother of one of the classmates of one of my children invited my wife round for "tea". She had clearly gone out of her way to think about the invitation, including by dredging her kitchen cupboards for a "teapot" which had probably not seen active service for a very long time, if ever. This was an effort at reaching out to her new European neighbo(u)r in a spirit of cultural relevance, and all credit to her for that.

Anyway, having boiled the stove-top kettle - (the electric kettle hasn't made it into the New World either - don't get me started on that) - she proceeded to mix hot water and tea bags (with strings) together in the pot, along with - this is true - milk and sugar. After stirring all four ingredients for some time, she emerged from the kitchen and sheepishly asked my wife whether this was how it was done.

Independence, anyone?