Just A Cup
There have been many great inventions over the years. Velcro, the spinning jenny, silicone chip, cheesecake, the Miami Sound Machine - I could, and often do, go on.
But there are other inventions which we don’t need and at the top of that list is the saucer.
I give no fucks for saucers, because they have the double whammy of being pointless and looking stupid.
If I get a coffee, I want a cup of coffee and I will hold it while I drink. I don’t need something to put it on. I don’t need something else to sit it on which I will have to hold with my other hand while I drink.
“But what if you need to put it down while you are drinking it?”
It’s a cup of coffee! It’ll take me maybe five minutes to drink! I think I can put my other commitments on hold for that long. Actually, probably less than five minutes, because anyone that would give you a saucer will probably serve your coffee in a stupid little cup.
“But what about your biscuits?” you persist.
Ah yes.
Saucerphiles, in their inability to move with the times, have not noticed that biscuits are getting bigger. Gone are the Custard Creams of yesteryear; now we have Hobnobs, Digestives and the mighty Wagon Wheel.
Even if you do get a small biscuit on a saucer, the second you lift your cup the biscuit falls over the ridge into the middle bit. So you’ve got to find a surface, put down the saucer and redeploy the biscuit.
People: mugs. Coasters if you must. But lose the saucers. One of the greatest influences of American culture is the abolition of this stupid invention.
In fact, no - the saucer isn’t even an invention. Get out. Just go.
18 comments
And another thing, they give them to you at seminars and similar gatherings and then when you actually utilise them by slurping up the spilt tea and biscuit crumbs, they accuse you of being uncouth!
Go figure.
Hear! Hear!!!
My mother made us use a saucer for every cup of tea - AND coffee! - we made. She was a bit of a cleaning freak.
I rebelled. You get your tea and coffee in a mug. That’s it. Live with it.
No you’re quite wrong thinking saucers are for putting the cup on, they’re for putting the tea/coffee in. When the grocer delivered our groceries he always poured his tea straight into the saucer to drink - that way it cooled quicker and he could have a quick cuppa and be on his way. That’s the only use I’ve ever seen for saucers anyway - except for putting the cat’s milk in.
It’s also very rare to find a cup that acually fits snuggly in it’s saucer, so it’s inevitably easier to spill the contents of the cup into the saucer, which it is obviously designed to catch.
It’s almost like the worlds most lame self-fulfilling prophecy.
I also hate saucers, in case you hadn’t noticed.
I think you’ll find that Wagon Wheels used to be up to 18 inches in diameter in the early sixties.
And your pin up photo demonstrates that Mr Blair forgot to ask not to have a saucer. Or an illegal war in the middle east based on a trumped up dodgy dossier.
Pah. Why does everything have to be streamlined and functional these days? How dreary! Let’s hear it for the beautiful but useless saucer!
I am an inveterate tea spiller. I need saucers. Also, what Mike said.
So let’s recap.
On the one hand, you’ve got your practical aesthetes like Katy and Mike, and on the other you’ve got your functional ranters like me and Mr Angry.
Writersmoll offers a personal anecdote, Murphy provides some political insight, while Mel and Tanya are quick to jump to my defense.
I don’t mind opening a can of worms.
Just so long as the can is of a decent size and I can hold it with one hand.
Oooh, it’s like Question Time, only bollocks.
“Lady in the back with the floral basque. Yes. Oh, sorry - I beg your pardon, with the floral castilian.”
I dont know either way but i would have to say there is somthing quintisentialy British (apparently though it was invented in europe http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/thieme/archives/000733.html) about the humble saucer and that when sitting down for your everyday cuppa it is not an essential part of the process but when trying to impress the inlaws it may prove a winner (bone china and all that).
WHat’s interesting is tha tthe Cuppa - no milk- garnered exactly zero comments, while the lowly and oft-unwanted cypher-saucer has now chalked up ten.
And what does THAT say?
it tastes better….with saucer.
heeeeeeeeee
As a clumsy person with shaky hands, I fear the saucer. Especially if someone expects me to stand there, holding it, whilst conducting a conversation.
Uncouth fellows deem the saucer unnecessary? What folly.
If you served tea properly, with milk in a jug, sugar in .. pot? and biscuits and cakes on one of those quaint little cake stand thingies… then you’d know why you need a saucer. But as you MUGS are defiant, I’ll leave it at that.
Mind you, I can’t stand the bloody things.
P.S. Side plates are for biscuits, not saucers. I mean saucers are not for biscuits, that’s what you use side plates for, I don’t mean that side plates are for placing saucers on as that would just be completely and utterly ridiculous.
P.P.S. First visit here. Blame mike. I’ll be back.
Anxious - it’s a tough one. Do you take the saucer despite or because of your shaky hands.
If you have it, you don’t spill a drop, but risk dropping the saucer.
If you don’t, you definitely have wet burned feet.
Welcome by the way.
And to you Gordon. With you on the side plates.
No saucers here (except for a few in a bone china tea set that’s boxed up and hasn’t seen the light of day for 30 odd years)… we’re mug-lovers like you. I’ll post a photo of my favourite one soon.
Like anxious, I also need saucer to catch my tea. But I have developed a chopstick-like hold for cup and saucer. Thumb and index-finger for cup-handle, and pinkie and 4th finger hold saucer (chopstick-like). So you need only one hand, and no spilling on the carpet.
Jeremy has it, about the teacups and saucers being a quintessential British impress-your-inlaws thing…afterall, you’re going to look pretty naff sticking your pinky finger out from a mug handle, what? If you want to look naff, do that. If you want to look quintessential, do the whole teacup/saucer thing, if you want to look like you’re just having a coffee and it’s not an effort to seduce anyone around you, use a mug and just drink the sucker. Anyone’s mum who insists on little cupsful that turn quickly cold just so they can justify a saucer, can go scald themselves with the boiling tea they made which no-one got to enjoy. I think I need a coffee…
I have been a frequent visitor of this blog for some time now, so I thought it would be a good idea to leave you with my thanks.
Regards,
Jim Mirkalami
Leave a comment. Play nice. I will turn this blog around.