oh dear, what can the matter be!

So I’m at work.  It’s Saturday night, almost all of the girlies are at the Ball looking marvellously grown-up and exquisitely pretty (and their partners look so young and coltish!) and I am here in the darkened, quiet boarding house with 5 more hours to fill before they return home.  And we’ve had a truly bizarre storm for this time of year - around 5pm the sky came over eerie and orange, a ferocious wind began whipping the fig trees to and fro above my car, the old sash windows are still rattling their cranky bones, and it’s jolly cold!

A cup of tea will improve matters and I have my pretty pink and gold cup with five Twining Traditional Afternoon teabags.  So I scoot around to the girlies’ kitchen for some boiling water and milk and there’s one of the cooks finishing up in the main kitchen.  I fill my cup, jiggle my teabag and we natter about the glorious dresses and amazing hairstyles and how can you believe they are so grown up, it was only a few years ago they were this big and cried every night at the dining tables … Eventually it is time to say goodnight, ditch the teabag and head back to my cold office. My hands are nice and warm around the tea cup, I add the milk and take a gulp …

… and god HELP me, if I wasn’t standing in the corridor at work I would have spat it straight back out!  It is FOUL!!!  Ugh - is the milk off? - no! Did I use skim? - no!

I look in baffled dismay at the tea that is not living up to expectations and suddenly a little brown pillow bobs to the surface.  Huh!  The teabag - I am sure I put that in the bin.  So I fish it out and keep walking.  Then its twin appears - what!?!?!?

I stick my finger into the tea cup and give it a lumpy twirl - I have made my lovely cup of tea with all five tea bags in the cup at once.  All five. No wonder it’s dark brown.  No wonder its disgusting.  Who’d have thought Traditional Afternoon could look like treacle and taste like tar - you just need five tea bags.

Petulantly, I stomp back to the kitchen and dump the rest of the tea in the sink - and then look in dismay at my last three teabags sitting on the grotty dishcloth.  Oh! If only I’d thought - not something I’d done much of for the last 15 minutes - I could have carefully rescued them from the cup, saved them on a saucer and made another cup of tea!!!

Now I have institutional Bushells - and it’s a bit tar-like at the best of times! Woe is me  :-(

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