Frankly, what with The Split and The Fuck Up this week really hasn’t been my best. Today, after realising quite how skint I am (the answer… very) I noticed that my watch has decided to slow down, requiring a battery change, the first since I’ve had it, and that’s been two and a half years. Admittedly a battery doesn’t cost much, but it does cost something, and right now, that’s too much.
More importantly, there has been an almost wartime shortage.
Foolishly, a few months ago I bought a tin of tea. I succumbed to Sainsbury’s offer of novelty and went for a whopping 240 PG Tips pyramid in “Limited Edition” tin. They even called it a caddy, I was about to put my knees right up Mother Brown as the wartime nostalgia kicked in.
So I paid over the odds, only to ifnd, when I got home that inside the tin wasn’t just the tea I was expecting, or a surpise unexploded wartime shell, but a box of tea. PG Tips had put a cardboard box of 240 tea bags inside a tin. The cunts.
That wouldn’t have happenend in my grans day.
I soon got rid of the cardboard and the teabags were resting against metal. Good.
And htis has served me good in the last few weeks/months/years since whenever it was I bought this, possibly during the VE Day celebrations in 1945.
Tonight I am tired, I have an hour at home to kill between work and gig, I have boiled the kettle, I have made a sandwich and, quite uncharacteristically, I have put both the milk and the water in the cup before the tea. I reach into the tin.
I should point out at this juncture that I cannot see the bottom of the tin, despite my tallness, I’m not creeping over the rim like a child trying to see how they mystically apply the salt and vinegar in the chip shop (kids, it’s not worth it, very dull).
So my hand goes in to find only metal, no paper.
I have no tea, and just a cup of hot watery milk, or hot milky water, depending on whether you’re an optimist or not.
I went for the coffe, but the jar was empty.
I am not an optimist.