Teadrinking

A lovely afternoon at four o’clock, your mother begins her daily tea ritual… she pulls a fine china saucer out of the lower-left hand cabinet from between the dessert plates and the sherry cups followed immediately by a teacup on the next shelf; she then places the saucer and the teacup carefully on the tea table. She takes a shiny teaspoon—part of a relic silverware collection— out of the top drawer located to the left of the stove.

Enjoying every single step of her protocol, she proceeds to put a water-filled earthenware teapot on the stovetop at medium flame; and as the water begins to warm up, she browses through her delicate tea selection to make a decision that would mark her afternoon. Time is running out, the water is about to boil, but she finally chooses her favourite Earl Grey black tea. She fills her teaball with its fragrant dry leaves just as the earthenware teapot begins to whistle to announce it is ready to be taken off the fire.

Your mother lovingly places the teaball within the teacup and proceeds to pour the boiling water on top. She brews a perfect infusion, exactly three minutes for a strong taste that would live through the pale milk she’d add after the two cubes dissolved leaving a sweet caress behind. Marvelled by her creation she sits before it, inspires deeply, and brings the precious elixir close to her lips. But as soon as the cup touches her mouth, the divan she was sitting on comes to life and, along with the rest of the furniture in the house, stampedes off to the hot African savannah through the walls; taking your mother away forever.

Between stupefaction, disbelief and bewilderment, you drop to your knees and cry to the horizon visible through the torn walls: ‘WHY?? O, WHY!!!???’ And while a myriad of reasons line up to answer your question… the one that is most relevant is 42.