Red Hats & Rancor

I will now take this opportunity to express my deep and seething disdain for an organization whose warped and sickening denizens have been tolerated for far too long. This cadre of rich, simpering, tasteless old biddies go under the name of the Red Hat Society and their offenses against common decency are many. However, there is only one transgression of theirs that really sticks in my craw and for which I shall evermore seek retribution. Their ridiculous getups, consisting of frocks of eye-burning purple and nauseating crimson haberdashery are but one of myriad examples of American offenses against better taste; their mission statement of avoiding any legitimate purpose to their meetings aside from shopping and making spectacles of themselves is but a bald-faced acknowledgement of the rampant epidemic of apathy in this society. However, their egregious treatment and association with tea, that most blessed of leaves, I shall not abide.
For whatever reason, this nationwide flock of cackling hens who have far too long escaped the chopping block and the stewpot have adopted tea and tearooms as one of the main features of their perverted regiment. Tea, my favorite beverage and reason for living, that soothing yet stimulating elixir that had been the solace of captains of the British Empire and the greatest philosophical minds of the Far East for generations, now bogarted by a mass of overfed, soft-headed geriatrics proud of their status as morons. On tearooms across the land, once temples of solace against the batteries of twenty-first century life where men in tweed and women in muted wool skirts could go and enjoy a pot of proper loose leaf along with a selection of English and Continental sweets and savories, the legions of chortling prunes descend, destroying all quietude with their ear-splitting banter. Why? Because having tea is, after all, the proper and ladylike thing to do. Members of the Red Hat Society, being possessed of none of the true qualities of a lady, are obliged to ape and parody the qualities and institutions of their betters in order to further their own revolting world view. They will make themselves the new cultural personification of tea, all the while ripping down and soiling all such expressions that came before.
My first encounter with this society of red hats on pin heads was more than enough to earn my everlasting enmity and hatred. I was spending an afternoon in a local tearoom over a pot of Keemun and a plate of buttered scones. I was the only customer and my solace and satisfaction seemed complete. Then from the street came the muffled, high-pitched din of uncivil female voices caterwauling about nothing. The door of the tearoom flew open and in issued a mass of vaguely human shaped figures all as red and purple as infected boils. They made for the largest table in the establishment and sat down, never one of them silent for a single moment. As they passed the menu among them, their chatter, never worthy of being called conversation, did not cease and I could not help but overhear them.
“Well then, isn’t this place cute? What do they have to eat? A Cornish paste-ee? What’s a paste-ee?
A pasty is, in point of fact, an English meat pie or turnover and a great favorite of mine. It is pronounced like “pasta”, except with a double “e” in place of the “a”, not in the same was as the adjective used to describe unhealthy pallor or those things more modest exotic dancers place over their areola, such as that obnoxious gaggle were saying it at that moment. I tried to remain silent, hoping that they would all soon stop talking or spontaneously combust, but they just kept on.
“Marge, what are you going to get? Do you think I should get the paste-ee? What the heck is a paste-ee? Why do they call it a paste-ee?”
“What’s with all of those jars of leaves over on the wall? Where are the teabags? Do you think they have any herb tea?”
I could bear this no longer. Though it was a delicate piece, I dropped my bone china cup and saucer with a clatter and stomped to their table.
“It is pronounced pasty, I roared. “Pasty, for the love of god, pasty. Oh, how I loath every one of you. I can only hope that the diseases common to your segment of the population claim you all in the most severe and disgusting way possible.”
I stormed out and have not returned to that tearoom since. Even then, my perturbence has not been alleviated. Obliged now to buy my loose leaf tea for consumption in my home from various mail order companies, I was one day perusing the latest catalogue of a fine tea merchant. After having marked off the few pounds which I planed to order, my eye was drawn to a new offering in the catalogue. My face went first white, then red. The description read:
The Red Hat Society approached us about producing a tea just for them, and we of course said “Yes!” Red Hats are sweeping the country!
Every one of these tokens of treachery were offered only as teabags and were then barely worthy of being called tea, the majority of them being flavored teas and flowery herbal infusions. I would have declared a jihad on all Red Hats from that moment on and perhaps seek to perpetrate the same sort of atrocities that were done to tea drinking British sympathizers during the American Revolution, tarring and feathering them in the streets and pouring scalding tea down their throats. Then again, that is the sort of thing that coffee drinkers do. And why, after all, should anymore tea be wasted on these people?