'We’ve only lost about 400 [mugs] this year, which is down from about 1000.'

Lev Eakins chats to Adam Fielding, owner of the Tiny Tea Tent, also known as an ‘eco god of tea’

It was an ominous assignment – track down and interview the highest ranking official from the world renowned Tiny Tea Tent (TTT), an institution in it’s own right.

I was fortunate enough to secure access to the owner himself, and we arranged to rendezvous at midnight on the Sunday evening of Greenbelt.

We sat down on some logs at the side entrance to the bubbling, steaming, serving counter and, taking a sip from my English breakfast tea, we began to talk among the candle glow and gentle ambience of late night tea drinking.

It was 1992 that Adam, along with his ex-wife, served their first mug of tea at Glastonbury festival.

Shaky

It was a shaky start in a simple canvassed tent, without much of the tea serving infrastructure he currently has.

They spent the rest of the summer gaining access to other British festivals, serving tea to the traders which was an ingenious way of getting known and more importantly, into the summer festival circuit.

Greenbelt festival, then at Deene Park near Corby in Northamptonshire was more difficult to penetrate. “Our requests were simply blanked at first, but then one year a new guy was put in charge of these arrangements and got back to us.” Adam tells me, “It was about ten years ago, I think, that we first came to Greenbelt.”

He once worked a circuit of 12 festivals in one summer, but now averages between four and seven festivals a year. His holy trinity of ‘core’ festivals have settled down to Glastonbury, WOMAD and of course, Greenbelt.

“The Greenbelt crowd are more respectful, very polite and patient, but sometimes a little arsey,” he says with a wry smile.

He himself is the very model of a peaceful and gentle man, looking younger than he is with a full head of hair and healthy complexion.

Existence

I discover this may be due to his balanced existence with his environment, as he aims for his business to “tread carefully amongst nature.”

If he got a £1m tip? “I would buy a swath of land and leave it to God. Too much of our green space is developed without giving it enough time for plant and animal species to settle and thrive.”

It was this environmentally sound approach that has won the TTT a Gold award this year from a Glastonbury panel of Greenpeace, the Soil Association and Fairtrade – on this first year it entered the competition.

Undoubtedly a framed sheet of paper hung on a central pillar contributed to this award as it describes that the stitched canvass of the tent, the stoves and bio-fuel of the kitchen and the wood reclaimed to build the serving hatch, the TTT was built and is run with the minimal amount of harm to our eco system.

I ask Adam about his best, weirdest and worst moments of serving tea over the years.

“The best part of this job is the people we meet, which connects the weirdest moment that happened here at Greenbelt one year. I used to have a tin bath with me which at the early hours of the morning we would fill with the excess hot water we had left.

Bath

“I usually took the bath myself, but on this occasion I offered it to anyone else. A couple in their late 20’s immediately took me up on the offer, stripped off and took a hot bath right here in the tent.”

And the worst moment? “Being told I had to move the tent after we spent two days setting it up! Which happened here at Greenbelt last year.”

I ask about mug theft and he tells me that since he has dropped the deposit scheme he hasn’t lost as many mugs – possibly due to people considering the mug theirs if they “buy” it with their deposit.

“We’ve only lost about 400 this year, which is down from about 1000.”

He wouldn’t consider opening a Tiny Tequila Tent (pity!) but what about the future of TTT?

“I’m not interested in creating an empire, or even expanding the Tent. We could make more money doing that, but what’s the point?

“I’m more interested in the quality of the experience and creating a peaceful setting. I would like to do a world tour though, slowly making my way round the continents, meeting the world over a cup of tea here in my little tent.”

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