Kevin Marks has hit upon a cool concept for mapping social behaviours, cultural idiosyncrasies and disconnected traditions for people who find themselves out of context and living away from home or in another country. Kevin is a Brit living in California so there's loads of stuff for him to map, he started off with Tea. I'm very partial to a 'cuppa like most of my tea weaned brethren. You can, of course, get tea in England so there's no need for me to map out this area for Scots in my neck of the woods, however the water is very different down here compared with back home and this does have a big impact on the flavour and feel of tea. I suppose if you've always lived in England where many parts have hard water then you don't know what I'm talking about.

Our water here in Northamptonshire is pretty claggy (great word), high in minerals and tiny fragments of limestone (I think, someone correct me if I'm wrong). This results in a cloudy cup of tea and the flavour's a bit off too. So we invested in a great new electric kettle which has a built in filtration system. Worth checking out if you're after a great cuppa tea in a hard water area.