Not Quite All The Tea In China

What a contrast today was from yesterday. Long gone were the blue skies and the glorious sunshine to be replaced with dark scudding clouds and bouts of heavy rain.
This meant another road trip to the coast would have to be postponed until another time - two seaside sojourns in two days would be a bit greedy anyway! 
So what do - well why not another pub lunch I hear you say. So we braved the by now persistent rain and decided a return to The Five Pointed Star in West Malling was due. As usual the service, food and beer were all great.
We also got to meet another hostelry hound by the name of Simba. I couldn't tell you what breed he was but he was a big fella (he came up to above waist height). He looked rather mournful when he appeared out of a corridor and wandered over to our table as we were eating our lunch and the barmaid explained, whilst apologising entirely unnecessarily for his genial presence, that another member of staff was dog sitting him and that one of his best canine pals had just recently passed away, hence his sad demeanour. Poor chap!
The rest of the day was spent catching up with some telly until I realised late in the afternoon that I still hadn't got my blip. So this is just another discarded item outside my back door emergency blip.
This little tea caddy once had a black ink design with vibrant-style calligraphy on it on a red background but this has faded to a pinkish hue over time. It used to hold Wang Chuan Fine Chinese Tea.
The story of the company started in 1862 during the reign of the Tongzhi Emperor during the Qing Dynasty. The founder, Wang An Shang, crossed the strait from Jinjiang County in Fujian Province in China and settled in Taiwan where he founded his first tea house.
The company have continued to explore the complex factors that contribute to good tasting tea throughout the last 160 years - including plants, altitude, soil, climate conditions and their unique charcoal roasting technique. So much you can learn from a little tea caddy that has been left out in the rain! :-)