A quick thought today that doesn’t qualify as something as deep as a meditation. Here we go.

I managed to write a whole post about tea a few weeks ago without mentioning the very important topic of the herbal variety. Now, I know herbal tea has all the associations of hippiedom, plant-based diets, clean living and moral rectitude, but it’s no skin off my nose to admit that we drink a lot of it about these parts.

It’s mainly a sleep thing. The fact is, Daniela and I are both bad sleepers, borderline insomniacs, really, and a nice herbal brew before bedtime really seems to help bring on slumber’s rosy embrace. We started out with the gateway stuff: a nice, simple camomile, just to take the edge off. But soon it seemed not to be working too well, and we needed something stronger: maybe camomile cut with lavender, that kind of thing.

Now we can’t be without it. We’ve become hardcore users – always on the lookout for more, stronger, better. We’ve tried it all: Twining’s and all the mainstream dealers, but then the exotic stuff, with sustainably-printed labels and kooky names reflecting their alternative credentials.

And that is the germ of today’s brief, insubstantial thought. When it comes to naming products, marketing departments really do pull out all the stops, don’t they? And when you’re naming a kind of tea that brings on slumber, wouldn’t they just rub their hands with glee when they came up with this one?

But, as our U.S. cousins like to say, here’s the thing. That’s such a good phrase: it rolls off the tongue with a kind of portentous solemnity. But it’s so good it’s been used before – by the brilliant and hugely influential hardboiled detective fiction writer Raymond Chandler. In his novel of the same name, private dick Philip Marlowe uses the phrase as a euphemism for death — not a good association for your organic tea brand at all.

Makes sense when you think about it: the biggest, deepest sleep of all is the one you don’t wake up from. But as a name for tea? I don’t think it works – well, it doesn’t if you happen to make a habit of over-analysing things. And if you’re a fan of detective novels and film noir, it’s even harder.

I’m guessing all those marketing types who got together to run a few ideas up the flagpole, bounce a few concepts around, brainstorm what everyone’s brought to the table, either hadn’t heard of Raymond Chandler or assumed the majority of their consumers haven’t. And maybe they were right.

That’s it really. There’s a sector of the population (possibly a very small one) that doesn’t fall for the branding spiel every time. Those Madison Avenue types need to try harder and not nick their tea names from 1930s novels — they’re only cheating themselves.

And with that, it’s way past my bedtime and there’s a steaming mug of ‘Rest in Peace’ herbal tea waiting for me. Sweet dreams!