I couldn’t resist posting another Nicholson Baker quote, since it ties into a couple of recurring Bean-themes, tea and the spelling of the word gray. This is from A Box of Matches:
“The dawn sky is now visible: the snow is a very light blue rather than a grey. Yes, grey with an e – that’s one of those English spellings that I accept (aeroplane isn’t bad either), and not just because I learned to read it on the boxes of Earl Grey tea that my mother had. When spelled with an e, grey half hides the wide, crude sound of the a behind the obscuring mists of the e. It’s rare for a one-syllable word to have so much going on.”