Special Guest Blogger: Thomas Sullivan

Howdy Limeys, now i know that drinking Tea is your thing so it must really annoy you that it wasn't a pasty faced Brit who invented the tea-bag but a yankee.
Now you may know that way back in the late 18th Century, demonstrators boarded British ships in Boston harbour and threw the cargo of 342 chests of tea into the sea. The British government responded by not allowing America to be part of your empire anymore (Boo Hoo) so you would assume that ever since Americans have an aversion to drinking tea as it is associated with Boston, King George and the dastardly 18th Century English shooting at them.
We did have Iced Tea before tea bags, you may think that Iced Tea was one of those things that just happened to sound like it was made from cold tea, like Dr Pepper isn't actually made by doctors or contain peppers, and that's true but we add lemon slices and fresh mint to the cold tea and believe me that's better than the piss weak stuff you limeys serve but anyway, i'm here because in 1908 i accidentally invented the tea bag.
I was a tea and coffee exporter and at the time tea drinkers used a removable device to easily make tea in a mug such as tea eggs and tea balls which were perforated metal containers which were filled with loose leaves and immersed in boiling water, and then removed using an attached chain.
Needless to say, us American's are a lazy bunch and to keep the tea samples i sent out from leaking everywhere, i began to send samples of tea to my customers in small silken bags and some assumed that these were supposed to be used in the same way as the metal infusers, by putting the entire bag into the pot, rather than emptying out the contents.
Customers complained that although the new tea-bags were great, the mesh on the silk was too fine and it was hard to get out of the cup so instead of rolling my eyes and calling them dumbasses, i had the idea of developing bags with less fine mesh and added a string so they didn't burn their stupid fingers and tea bags were born.
I then sold my tea-bag idea back to you Brits where you can enjoy the convenience of tea making with more time for arguing over whether the milk or water goes in first and then over stir the liquid, not that it does anything to the flavour of the tea but it seems you Brits do like the constant chinking of the spoon against the cup which is just really, really annoying to everyone else but it's your thing, you do what you like.