Dec 2

Today was an in-office day, which wasn’t the original plan, but we were too awake at six AM to bother trying to fall back asleep. So, by nine, we were out in the vast wilderness of Scarborough nursing a Tetley Indulgence Tea.

Tetley does several of these, but the one my office tea club is addicted to is called Cookies and Cream. It’s a seasonal thing, we’re convinced, because after months of making peace with its disappearance from the shelves, a non-work friend called in a flap having found it by the boxful at her local Walmart. Her Walmart being – minor detail – in Winnipeg. Luckily for the office, we were heading out that way to see Giselle anyway – this friend does the dyeing and costuming for them and would we like one of her free tickets. So, we stocked up on Tetley Indulgence and the Tea Club is reinvigorated.

It’s a dessert tea, and as the Cookies and Cream name suggests, milk enhances it. There’s a bit of vanilla in there, too. Nothing too extravagant, but it makes a change from bog standard Tetley. And it gets us through hours of endless hold music while at work. Nothing is quite as demoralising as a mangled violin sonata by oblique classical composer of your choice. This one screeched on all the high notes. It was not the Serenity Now customer service presumably thought it was. Instead, tea. And this evening, some light verse.

Flowers
Wendy Cope

Some men never think of it.
You did. You’d come along
And say you’d nearly brought me flowers
But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts –
The sort that minds like ours
Dream up incessantly. You thought
I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then.
Now I can only smile.
But, look, the flowers you nearly brought
Have lasted all this while.