Tuesday, May 08, 2018

Cold Toast With Cold Tea

Sam eats cold toast, or cold tea, which I find really peculiar. The butter doesn’t melt on cold toast. The taste changes completely when tea is no longer hot.

If everyone accepted cold toast and cold tea, society would break down, as we know it. Cafes and restaurants would close. Supermarkets would go out of business. Trade would be put at risk. I tell him.


He calls me a Promite lover.

My mother fed me Promite when I was young because she read it contained less salt. "But that is in conjunction with Vegemite," I say. "I love them both. Your tastes are just unnatural."

"Ha ha, I disagree," Sam says.

"What are you thinking?" I ask him, as he sips his tea with that clearly visible cold tea film on the surface.

Sometimes he sits there and consumes both. When I am watching him alarmed, he tells me to look away.

Whenever he asks me if I want tea, or toast, I politely decline.

Cold tea with cold toast, I can hear all of my great aunts restless in their graves. Grande old English Dames (okay, not quite Downton Abbey) who'd make me tea pots of tea covered in tea pot covers, tea that would come out the colour of mahogany, who'd have neenish tarts and fairy cakes and cream sponges and eclairs to eat with our afternoon tea. My grand mother and her generation of women who taught me how to drink tea on Sunday afternoons. So please, before you question me, I want you to know that I was taught by experts.

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