Four weeks into my US trip, and the need for tea has become critical. Beyond critical. Tea is haunting my dreams.

I’ve discovered that three of their measly American teabags combined with a pan of boiling water can produce something that has a passing affinity to tea, but then seldom have I access to a pan of boiling water.

I was asked if I’d like some tea in someone’s house, and started frothing with excitement, before watching her put a tea bag in a mug of cold water, add a dash of cream, then microwave the abomination. I’ll leave you a moment so you can swallow back that rising tide of vomit-y horror.

Americans do not possess kettles. I don’t know how they make hot water bottles or Pot Noodles or any of the other essential trappings of civilisation, but I can tell you how they make coffee, which involves those silly pod things that come wrapped in plastic and foil and other such muck the planet could do without, and an absurdly complex coffee maker that steadfastly refuses to make tea.

It is to this absence of tea I ascribe many of America’s problems. Consider the opioid crisis. I’m confident it wouldn’t be of such magnitude if they had access to a nicely brewed bucket of dark brown loveliness. Then they’d have learned from birth to find pleasure in tiny treats, to break up their days into manageable chunks, each punctuated by gentle, civilised pleasures.

In Tennessee I met up with a couple of girls I’d become friendly with online. They offered me coffee, or cola, but it was 10pm, and I was already a bit giddy. No booze was offered: they didn’t drink. So I got a lovely glass of iced water, fine, but then, get this, as I was leaving they wanted to give me a parting gift, and yanked open their toiletries bags to offer me medication. Sleeping pills, tranquilizers, steroids, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, uppers and downers of every variety.

No wonder they couldn’t drink, the poor devils. I’m confident all their anxiety and depression and all the rest could be ameliorated with a sit down over a brew. We need to send another shipping container of tea into Boston harbour, for their sake and mine.

"I’m confident the opioid crisis wouldn’t be of such magnitude if the US had access to a nicely brewed bucket of dark brown loveliness..."

In Atlanta I tramped about the sunny streets, noting all the Margaret Mitchell tributes, she of Gone With the Wind fame, but largely in pursuit of hot wet goodness.

I found a cafe called Sweet Treats, which featured a gigantic beverage menu. At last, surely, steaming brown gold! But no.

They offered - and I swear I’m not making this up - cheese foam tea; ‘classic’ (?!!!) hazelnut tea; chocolate milk tea; creme brûlée tea; dragon pearl jasmine tea; oriental tea pop; and, my personal favourite, mango cheese foam green tea. That’s not a combination of words I ever imagined I’d type.

I went for honey ginseng, and was then asked if I’d prefer it hot or cold. My friend John wanted a latte. Would he like that sweetened with peppermint syrup? He would not. Hot or cold…? Outside I watch a man balance his gun on a postbox while he stooped to tie his shoelace; another do an odd shuffling robotic dance, hat perched on the pavement for pennies.

In Texas there were jugs of iced tea on every dining table, and also I drank something called twisted iced tea, which is the alcoholic version, in blackberry, cherry and lime flavours, and I was glad of it, but damn it all, it wasn’t tea.

I love Americans. They bought all my books within the first half hour. But they do seem to have a tendency to go nuclear at the first provocation, reaching for a gun rather than a truncheon, an opioid before a steaming elixir of calm; handing out 99 years of jail time for petty larceny.

By contrast, we are a people that can be rendered cheerful by the promise of tea and a biscuit.

And thus ours is a nation for whose fortunes and future I fear not.

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