... random thoughts about Tea

Bachelor. Interesting word I thought. A bachelor by its definition is a single male I thought. Mothers think of a clean cut, respectable young man, or Cliff Richard as they like to call them. Thirty-something’s think of Tom Hanks running about a hotel room wearing tight denim jeans that look like they have been spray painted onto his legs, while a donkey stands in the corner sniffing and eating a concoction of coke, speed, red, blue, yellow and green pills and blah blah blah. Time changes everything, and for me, time has meant that this word no longer conjures up these images. No. For me this word now leaves one very harsh and real image in my mind ... soup in a cup.

It used to be that if you were a bachelor, you were free and single. Enjoying life to the full without a care in the world. Being able to alter your mind state at every whim with no one to give you that authorative, disapproving look. Then finishing the night off by having guilt-free sexual interaction with a woman called Christine or was it Catherine ... whatever!

Now it’s just soup in a cup. The cup being society as we know it now. The soup being single men. We are a starter. We are not a main course, and we are too savoury to be a dessert. The question is what you can put in a cup to defy this.

Alcohol I thought. Lovely alcohol. Alcohol is your friend. Alcohol comforts you when you are down. Alcohol lets you say how you feel. Alcohol is your friend.

The draw back with alcohol is that it’s definitely NOT your friend when you wake up the next day. It has the ability to disguise the real world. When you are alcohol everyone and everything is beautiful. The next morning when alcohol has disappeared, you are left with one word to describe the person sharing your usually spacious double bed ... munter.

Women don’t want soup and they definitely don’t want alcohol. Soup is a starter. Something they try for about five minutes until the main course comes along. Alcohol will show them a very good time but leave them with a horrible feeling the next day.

What else is there I thought? Soft drinks maybe? Naturally the first word sums that liquid refreshment up.

Coffee maybe? Coffee comes in a variety of aromas, shapes and sizes. Sort of like friends do really. “I’m just nipping out to meet up with latte and espresso. I’ll see you later”.

What else is left I thought?

One word entered my mind ... tea.

The only word that can bring a smile to any English persons face. Tea is the first thing you want to see in the morning. The first thing you want when you get to work. The first thing you want when you go around your mates. The first thing you want when you get back home. The first thing you want when the flame ignites the rizla paper. Wonderful tea. “Tea Mart….”. “Cup-o-tea me olde china?”. “Pauline put the kettle on”. What a beautiful thought.

The main problem being that I’m not tea. The other problem being that I’ve just thought of the weirdest analogy ever.

Thoughts …… that’s all these are. Weird and random thoughts that just appear in my head like road works do over night.

I have issues as you may have guessed. The thing that keeps me going is that I whole-heartedly believe that people with issues are special. Like Hunter S. Thompson said, “Too weird to live and too rare to die”. I like that.

You might think this analogy is weird, but yet you still can see the underlying meaning behind each different liquid refreshment. Therefore I’m too rare to die. Thank fuck I thought. That keeps me going. If I couldn’t see that there were other liquid refreshments out there, then I would have already been a memory in all my family and friends minds. Tears cascading down their cheeks at the realization that the smoking entrance in my head was self inflicted.

Lucky for me, and for them I suppose, that I think that would just be a cop out. I don’t like the thought of it. It is a cop out. Tea is a magical thing. It’s a very hard and difficult refreshment to find. The journey to it is fraught with danger. Once you get there though, well imagine Narnia. Narnia with Tea. Paradise I thought.

Enough with the analogies.