Ellee Seymour

Funny the things we get het up about.  American television reporter and presenter Michael Manning could not see why he had to pay for a tea refill. While free coffee refills are part of the unspoken American constitution, the issue of whether the same applies to a second tea bag seems to be very much a grey area.

Now Michael could probably afford to buy the entire restaurant where he took his mom for a Mother’s Day treat. But the idea was firmly entrenched in his mind that a refill should be free. Michael’s reaction was something like: “Whaaat? I had never been hit with this before.”

The American way of drinking tea is also very amusing, I have never heard of “tethering tea” before, which means having two cups of tea from one tea bag.

Whenever I visited my English friend Angie in the States, I was always asked to take over a couple of boxes of PG Tips and she would parsimoniously re-use each tea bag too, savouring every part of it until there was nothing left to squeeze. And Liptons does just not compare to a good British brew.

Talking of tea reminds me that I must visit the nearby delightful and very special Peacock’s Tearoom in an idyllic setting by the river in Ely which recently scooped the top Tea Guild’s Award. It is run by a former solicitor, George Peackock, who I would regularly see when court reporting, and his partner Rachel Lemkov; they both made sweeping career changes which have thankfully paid off.

What makes them so special is their fabulous home cooked food and tea sourced from all over the world to refresh and tease the tastebuds. Rachel’s favourites are the Pleine Lune - which is flavoured with vanilla, almonds, and with a few cornflowers thrown in - and the delicious Chocolate Imperial.

If the Americans can have free coffee refills, do you think we should insist on free tea refills in the UK as it is our national drink? I’ll have to ask George his views on this. 

Michael, if you are ever in the area, I will treat you to a proper English tea, and you can forget the weak and tasteless Liptons. Excuse me now while I put the kettle on….

The abduction of Madeleine McCann has striking similarities to the mysterious disappearance of toddler Rahma el-Dennaoui who was also snatched from her bed, sleeping between her two sisters at their home in Sydney, 18 months ago.

Her father checked on her at 2am - and by 8am she had vanished. Police suggested she may have been taken by a childless couple or a woman desperate for a child.

It is believed the front bedroom Rahma shared with two sisters was targeted by the kidnapper, and that he or she cut a hole in the window flyscreen to abduct the toddler. Police remain in weekly contact with the family, who are still traumatised by losing Rahma.

A woman’s magazine New Idea has this week offered a reward of $20,000 to help solve the case. Rahma would now be three.

New Idea editor-in-chief Robyn Foyster said Rahma’s abduction was similar to that of English four-year-old Madeleine McCann, who recently disappeared from the bedroom of a holiday home in Portugal.

“She’s the Australian Madeleine. There are so many similarities to the cases, except Australia seems to have forgotten about its missing toddler.”

Police are still working full-time on this heartbreaking case, but remain totally baffled.

In memory of those who are still missing.

I hope when EU ministers responsible for urban and spatial development  meet in Leipzig this week, that they will  have given serious consideration to boosting the number of urban trees in our neighbourhoods.

I live in Cambridgeshire, the least wooded county in the country, and not the best of place to be as I adore trees and avenues. I feel an adrenalin rush whenever I see a row of glorious lime, plane or maple trees. I do love the avenues and tree-lined squares in France.

So I was totally engrossed by The Politics of Trees on Sunday’s Politics Show which told how lots of urban trees are being cut down without proper justification, taking the easy way out to please insurance companies and local authorities. I can understand it if a tree is causing structural damage to the house, but that should only be a last resort.

In 2004 an African woman, Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize for recognising the social and economic benefits of planting thousands of trees in Africa.

But when did you last see a newly planted avenue? Will they come back into fashion and make our communities brighter and greener?

And could science not intervene so trees are genetically designed to have shorter roots which would cause less structural damage to nearby buildings? What trees could be planted in streets to keep everyone happy?