Tea pots

'They' say that you should not wash your tea pot, that tea tastes better if the pot has a patina, as if old tea stains impart a better tea flavour. Do you have an opinion? I have recently discovered that steeped tea tastes much better than tea brewed in a cup but I can't tell if it's because of those stains or not.

I've known people (of the British persuasion) who timed the steeping of their tea. It had to be precisely three minutes (or whatever) and they held very firmly to this practice - to the point that a friend once refused a cup I made because I didn't steep it properly.

There is probably a correlation between finicky tea drinkers and those fussy about their boiled eggs: just this long - no more, no less. Not being a big fan of the boiled egg, I didn't have strong opinions about it, except that I prefer there to be no runny bits on my plate. For some reason that bothers me. As for the tea, well, I used to load it up with so much milk and sugar it could have been warm cod liver oil for all I knew. Oddly enough it just might be that I'm now making it 'properly' but I quite like the tea for its own sake now, and not for the sugar delivery system it used to be. I also really like my plump tea pot, and get a great deal of happiness from seeing it sitting on the counter. It's the simple things, folks!