Tuesday tea tunes: Stretching out tea time

When I roamed the streets of London early this year, I made a lengthy playlist of songs about the city — Willie Nelson's "London," Lily Allen's "LDN," "Picadilly" by Squeeze, Duke Ellington's "Hyde Park," Nick Drake's perfect "Mayfair" (it is strange!) and such — to score my ramblings whilst high from low tea. One of the songs was a folk classic I'd heard of but never heard before: Ralph McTell's "Streets of London," a sad tale of those less fortunate out there among us. It includes an anecdote of an old man killing time in a cafe: "Looking at the world over the rim of his tea-cup / Each tea lasts an hour, then he wanders home alone."