Tag Archives: tea

3334. A sudden event

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Old Mrs. Buckingham didn’t really know what to do. She was sitting at the dining table with her husband. They were happily eating a home-cooked burger roll when, after taking a substantial bite, her husband of fifty-two years of marriage froze with his mouth full of frankfurter. He was dead.

She immediately phoned for an ambulance but it was obvious to her it was going to be too late. Her quandary was this: did she leave him exactly as he died or did she take the half chewed frankfurter out of his mouth? He clearly hadn’t choked on it. It was simply an instant death. Boom! and he was gone.

In the end she left the frankfurter sticking out of his mouth. The medical orderly, or whoever it was, could do the deed if necessary.

Old Mrs. Buckingham did do one thing however, before the ambulance arrived. She emptied the teapot down the sink. Every evening they complemented their meal with a cup of tea. This evening was different. She didn’t want any medial people discovering what she’d put in the teapot.

3274. Dear Monique

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Dear Monique,

Your father and I had looked forward to some sort of engagement announcement between you and Manville. For several years we had hoped that at some stage he would propose marriage for he seemed a very nice and polite young man. And indeed he did propose. We were thrilled.

Subsequently we have met his parents. Monique dear, you are making a terrible mistake. We had been fooled into thinking that Dubois von Zenithra was a surname with some standing. How wrong could we be? You’ve no idea what we thought once we met the parents. We were invited to their house. She made tea in the teapot with teabags. With teabags! Teabags in a teapot. I could almost taste the paper. Not only that, but when she poured the tea she didn’t put the milk in first. Some people are so crass.

Things went from bad to worse.  There were no side plates or even napkins to place our slice of bought cake. I had to hold a sticky slice of chocolate cake while trying to hold the teacup with the other hand. They clearly didn’t know how to do things properly but were going all out to impress us. But they had no class. The bought chocolate cake could have been purchased at any cheap cake shop. You’ve either got it or not and they most definitely didn’t have it. Incidentally when I asked if she had a napkin she had a paper one. A paper napkin! It was brown, clearly made from recycled paper.

So all in all dear, we think you should call off the engagement before you are trapped permanently in a degenerate relationship that would scar you for life. Your father said he’s not paying for good food at a wedding reception when they wouldn’t appreciate it. They probably wouldn’t understand the French in the menu anyway. They’d think that hors d’oeuvres was some sort of meat from a poor little pony!

Now Willie McBride is coming here next Thursday. His mother’s in the Bridge Club and is related by marriage to Lady Constantia Bracknell. You couldn’t do better than that.

3001. Cream in the tea

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(I said I might post occasionally, so this is occasionally!)

Carmel thought it high time she visited her dear friend, Theodosia. Theodosia’s husband worked on an oil rig far out to sea. He made it to land perhaps once every few months. Carmel liked to stay in touch fairly regularly with Theodosia to “jolly things along”. It had been three long months since Theodosia  had seen or heard from her husband.

Theodosia was naturally delighted to see her friend. First things first. She boiled the kettle, set out a couple of cups, and then…

Oh dear! She didn’t have any cookies. “I’ll just pop to the nearby shop,” said Theodosia, “and grab a packet of something to nibble on.”

Carmel thought she might as well make herself useful while she waited for Theodosia’s return. She would pour the tea. There must be cream in the refrigerator. She opened the fridge door.

There was a man’s arm in there. Defrosting.

1980. Warm teapot

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Alannah hated tea. Well, “hated” might be a bit strong. She didn’t like tea. She never drank tea. She always drank coffee.

The first thing that husband Eugene did when he came home from work was to make a pot of tea. It was a little strange, he thought, that the teapot was already mildly warm. He never said anything, but he wondered why. A few days later the teapot was again warm.

“Have there being visitors?” asked Eugene.

“No,” said Alannah. “Why?”

“Nothing. Just wondered,” said Eugene. He didn’t want to give away why he was suspicious. If Alannah was “having someone around” he didn’t want to remove the evidence of a warm but emptied teapot once every several days.

After several weeks Eugene had had enough. “Look,” he said, “I know you have a visitor come every couple of days because you make tea. What’s going on? Who is it?”

“It’s no one,” said Alannah.

“Then why’s the teapot warm?” asked Eugene. “You don’t like tea.”

“I’m trying to grow to like tea,” said Alannah. It was clearly a lie. From then on the teapot was never warm. Alannah would rinse it with cold water.

Eugene’s birthday came. Alannah produced a special lemon tree growing in half a wine barrel. Eugene had drooled over it in the plant shop.

“At last!” exclaimed Alannah. “The truth can come out. They said to water it with cold tea.”

1971. Oh sugar!

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Pamela was a sound sleeper. She lived alone. She locked the house thoroughly each night before she went to bed. The neighbours were a bit strange – especially the wife. She was a bit of a recluse. Pamela had met her just the once. Word had it that she had been in and out of psychiatric care centres throughout her life.

It may have been because of this that Pamela was nervously suspicious. She had suspected for quite some time that strange things happened in the night. She was always meticulous about things, and sometimes she noticed that some household items had been moved ever so slightly, or even that she ran out of tea bags faster than she should. In fact she counted the tea bags. She used two tea bags a day. The seventy-eight tea bags in the box should last for thirty-nine days. She marked the date on her wall calendar.

Ashley, the neighbour, was a bit strange, but not as strange as his wife. He would come over once a week to Pamela’s for a cup of coffee. Pamela had never warmed to him. But a neighbour is a neighbour and it was after all only about thirty minutes in her week that his visits lasted. His wife never came with him.

Now the doctor had told Pamela to go easy on the sugar, so she filled the sugar bowl (in case visitors came and took sugar) and put the sugar bowl high in the cupboard. That was the last time she used it. It was a lot easier to give up sugar than she had expected.

When Ashley came over next she filled the conversation with the usual small talk. She had given up sugar. Did he still want sugar in his coffee? Perhaps he would prefer a cup of tea?

“Oh,” said Ashley, “I think you’re out of tea bags.”

1945. The case of the mysterious proposal

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When Anita got to the last sip of her tea at the rather sophisticated afternoon tea-party there was an engagement ring at the bottom of her cup. Her first thought was “I was lucky not to have swallowed all those diamonds”. Then she wondered whose ring may have slipped off as they drank tea and she had picked up the wrong cup. And then she wondered, “I wonder if this ring was meant for me? I have dated two of the men here but I doubt that either was serious enough.”

She glanced around. No one seemed to be watching her. No one seemed to be waiting for a “Yes!” No one seemed to be anticipating a surreptitious shriek of excitement to escape her cherry red lips.

If the proposal was real it would be so banal to simply say, “Hey! Look what I found!” She would spend an entire marriage living with the dullness of having not looked pleased at the marriage proposal.

George came over to her. He was undoubtedly the handsomest man there – or so Anita thought – although he wasn’t one of the two that Anita had been out on dates with.

“How’s it going?” said George.

“Good,” said Anita. “And how are you?”

“Good,” said George. “Would you like another cup of tea?”

“I’d love one,” said Anita.

George took Anita’s cup and saucer and headed for the table with the teapot. He returned.

“Thank you so much,” said Anita. George moved further around the room.

Needless to say, Anita was rather keen to get to the bottom of her cup. Was the ring still there? She was halfway through sips of her too, too hot tea when Berwyn began squealing in the far corner of the room.

“Oh George! Oh yes! Yes! Yes! Oh Georgie darling! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

1793. Tea

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The late King of Thailand had a fairly long name.

Queen: Would you like a cup of tea, Vajiralongkorn Borommachakkrayadisonsantatiwong Thewetthamrongsuboriban Aphikhunuprakanmahittaladunladet Phumiphonnaretwarangkun Kittisirisombunsawangkhawat Borommakhattiyaratchakuman?

King: Yes, darling, that would be lovely.

Queen: Would you like it with milk this time, Vajiralongkorn Borommachakkrayadisonsantatiwong Thewetthamrongsuboriban Aphikhunuprakanmahittaladunladet Phumiphonnaretwarangkun Kittisirisombunsawangkhawat Borommakhattiyaratchakuman, or would you like it without?

King: I’ll have it with milk, thanks darling.

Queen: Sugar, Vajiralongkorn Borommachakkrayadisonsantatiwong Thewetthamrongsuboriban Aphikhunuprakanmahittaladunladet Phumiphonnaretwarangkun Kittisirisombunsawangkhawat Borommakhattiyaratchakuman?

King: Yes.

Queen: One or two lumps, Vajiralongkorn Borommachakkrayadisonsantatiwong Thewetthamrongsuboriban Aphikhunuprakanmahittaladunladet Phumiphonnaretwarangkun Kittisirisombunsawangkhawat Borommakhattiyaratchakuman?

King: Two, thanks.

Queen: Would you like a cookie with that Vajiralongkorn Borommachakkrayadisonsantatiwong Thewetthamrongsuboriban Aphikhunuprakanmahittaladunladet Phumiphonnaretwarangkun Kittisirisombunsawangkhawat Borommakhattiyaratchakuman?

King: Oh for crying out loud; the bloody tea’s gone cold again.

1667. The worst of rats

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The thing that irked Iris wasn’t so much Harvey’s little eccentricities, but the fact that the poison hadn’t worked. They had been married for thirty-two years and for the last twenty-seven Harvey had driven Iris nuts. He’d squeeze the toothpaste tube, for example, at the top. It should be squeezed at the bottom. That way the paste would work its way up to the top. If you squeezed it at the top all you’re doing is driving half of the toothpaste downwards.

Then there was the way he’d spin the teapot before pouring. He’d turn the teapot three times to the left, then three times to the right, then once to the left; to aid the tea drawing process. Iris had been brought up the proper way, and she turned the teapot first to the right, then to the left, then to the right. Harvey was not going to compromise. He was stuck in the mud. He was what Iris called “a social embarrassment”.

Iris didn’t know how many times she told him, on a daily basis, when putting things into the dishwasher he should RINSE THEM FIRST. The dishes should be rinsed first; that’s what the instruction booklet said. RINSE THE DISHES FIRST. But no! In they went; straight into the dishwasher.

These were just a few of the things that riled Iris every day, all day, for twenty-seven out of the thirty-two years of wedded bliss. The solution to the problem lay in rat poison. If ever there was a rat, it was Harvey. Iris no longer cared about the consequences. Iris loved the irony of the possibility: rat poison for a rat. She put it in his food, in his coffee, even in the snuff he grotesquely sniffed about four times a day before sneezing loudly into a snuff-stained handkerchief.

It was all for nothing. Harvey seemed to have developed an immunity to rat poison. The worst rats sometimes do that.

Things came to an end when Iris, not Harvey, took ill and died. It was a slow, drawn out, painful death, in which she convulsed and writhed on the bedroom floor for a good half hour while Harvey meticulously filled the dishwasher in the kitchen, and poured himself a single cup of tea.

1279. Brown eggs

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Una and Rory had been married for fifty-two years. For fifty-two years Rory had devoured a boiled egg for breakfast. One egg and a slice of toast. Una made it for him every morning.

Rory was a little fussy; the egg had to be dark brown. Brown eggs were healthy. White eggs were feeble and lacked vitamins and health. A daily dark brown egg it had to be. Brown eggs came from healthy, robust chickens.

“It’s the brown eggs what done it,” said Rory on his eightieth birthday. Which just goes to show that Una’s secret of boiling a white egg in tea was good for the health.