After the excitement of last week’s Prom (which, incidentally, was a riot) I’m feeling a little apathetic, so I’m not writing a column this week. While this might seem like a problem, I have a plan: someone else is going to write it for me.

An old writing partner (and object of my eternal affections) is visiting me from England and, having arrived in San Francisco after a coast-to-coast trip, he’s going to regale you with his impressions of your magnificent country; well, either that or he’s going to piss you off. Anyway, without further ado, here’s Charlie:

What is it with America and tea? I’ve just driven 5,000 miles across this vast, incredible country and I was not able to get a good cup of tea anywhere.

I can’t understand it. Tea is a wonderful, wonderful thing. It’s very simple to make, it’s not bad for your health, it’s soothing, comforting and reassuring and it’s cheap as chips. In England, if you visit someone’s house, they give you a cup of tea. If your cat has just died, you have a cup of tea. If you’ve just got home after a tough day at work, you have a cup of tea. If you’ve just been binned by your bird (dumped by girlfriend), you hit the pub, drink 10 pints of lager, get in a fight, steal a fridge and pass out unconscious in the street. Then, when you wake up, you have a cup of tea. There is no situation that cannot be improved by tea.

So why don’t you have it here? I really think it would make you all feel better. You could stop worrying about tropical storms, gun control, killer bees, the situation in the Middle East and all the other things that get you guys wound up. You can adopt it as a national pastime, wholesale. Imagine: blacks and whites, Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, all enjoying a nice cup of tea at four o’ clock every afternoon. You can all just sit back, put your feet up, inhale the steam and enjoy the drink from the first scalding sip to the last sweetened swig.

Look, here’s what you do. First, don’t worry about china cups, teapots, saucers, etc. — all that nonsense is great if your mother’s visiting, but not actually necessary for making excellent tea. Next, find a big mug (and not a glass, OK?). Rinse it out if you’re fussy about germs and stuff. Boil some water in a kettle. Put a teabag (Tetley’s, if you can find it) in the mug. Pour in the boiling water. Wait for a minute, then stir it around a bit, remove the bag, add a slosh of milk and two sugars and drink the damn thing. Easy, right?

It’s especially strange when you consider the quality and variety of the rest of the menu over here. When I had breakfast this afternoon, I was offered six different bread products, eight different varieties of cooked egg and 12 flavors of milkshake. Why can’t I choose to have my tea the way I like it (and, for that matter, the bacon)? The tea was weak, lukewarm, served in a glass and disappointing in every possible way. At least, it would have been disappointing if I hadn’t learnt to expect primitive, substandard, epsilon-double-minus tea from America.

It’s like a huge trans-national blind spot. It’s a terrible, terrible flaw in an otherwise marvelous country. Across 18 states, I saw some amazing things: an Atlantic sunrise in South Carolina, a Pacific sunset in San Diego, limitless desert in New Mexico, a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, alligators in Florida. I played poker in Vegas, drank absinthe with Indians in the Navajo Nation, ate a 72 oz. steak in Texas and visited the Met in New York. The USA is a spectacular, dazzling and fantastically diverse country. Amid all this variety, there were only two things common to all the states: i) terrifying Christian radio stations and ii) piss-poor tea.

So make some decent tea, lose the whole Jesus thing, vote a little bit more intelligently in 2008 and declare independence for California. Get those things sorted and everything else will follow.

Email Charlie Rahtz diplomat@gmail.com if you think you can offer him a decent cup of tea; he’ll be here until Tuesday. Alternatively, bother me at navins@stanford.edu.