12 Jan 2010 THREE TEAS PLEASE

12 Jan 2010.
Hi there. it helps me get thru the dreary discomfort - so here we are then....
✫•❤´¯`•.☆
Bulletin from the Cold Snap 2010. 12 Jan
subtitle: THREE TEAS PLEASE

BACKGROUND: Coldest snap in UK for 30 years. No central heating or hot water in our house since New Years Day. Been living in the SofaNest near the gas fire. Ablutions by kettle, flannel and wet-wipes. Small, sissy, car, Miss Minerva Micra, stuck on road. No 1 daughter, Shans, throws toy baboons and lives upstairs next to her space heater. Engineers arrived yesterday on the day we had 1" snow over melting slush = lots of ice.

CHAOS IN THE VILLAGE HIGH STREET
Picture two hills about three hundred feet high with a narrow valley between them. Then draw a narrow High Street the length of the valley (about half a mile long) and draw another road, Oxford Road, that goes down one hill and up the other, across the High Street. The place where those two roads cross is a narrow squeeze on a summer's day.
Now I want you to imagine a bleak, icy winter's day. The double-decker bus (servicing the village and the nearby college campus) slid sideways a little bit on the icy road.
It didn't hit anything, it slid just enough so that it blocked the cross-road of the High Street with Oxford Road.
All cars aproaching the cross roads came to a halt. And all cars approaching the cars approaching the cross roads came to a halt. And all cars etc. etc.

Traffic backed up. A couple of cars on each road tried to turn around and some slid sideways downhill, causing a good, solid grid-lock that took nearly 5 hours to unlock
A white van somewhere in the middle of all that chaos was carrying our new boiler, the engineer and his workmen.

THREE TEAS PLEASE
The workmen walked from their van to our house, carrying tools and bits of pipe, slipping. sliding and cussing. (They are very, very good at it)
I was overjoyed to finally welcome them into our home. If I had a red carpet I'd have dusted it off.

Let me introduce them.
"Pa'rick" The engineer, the man of my dreams, , filthy overalls, tiny, bald, bow-legged and almost blind. (our relationship is only ever going to be platonic, I promise)
"Keef" The second in command, filthy overalls, small body, huge moustache, elderly and asthmatic (everytime he had to use his inhalor he had to part the 'tache and try and get the nozzle into his mouth without sucking up any surplus lip hair - tricky)
"Brine". The apprentice, filthy overalls, young, muscular, dark hair, designer stubble, good looking. (If his cell phone rang once it rang fifty times - popular lad, but with some pretty unoriginal chat-up lines.)
All in all, fairly typical, bog-standard, salt-of-the-earth, no frills men.

That was until, in line with Ninja-Granny tradition, I switched the kettle on, produced tea bags, popped them into mugs and offered them tea.

They shook their heads, and each one of them dug into their overall leg-pocket and produced a plastic box with tea bags.
Pa'rick said, "Fanks love, but I don't drink normal tea - use me de-caf tea-bags," and slapped the box on the counter.
Keef wheezed, "An these are me Vanilla tea-bags."
And Brine slapped his box on the counter, saying, "And these are me Green-tea tea-bags," slapping his box on to the counter.

De-caf tea? Vanilla tea and green tea? These are not fairly typical, bog-standard, salt-of-the-earth, no frills men. I have been visited by ambitious, upwardly mobile Tea connoisseurs. My workmen are Tea Yuppies. They're into designer tea. Tsss!Victoria bloody Beckham has much to answer for.

And they can jolly well make their own from now on.

Have a spiffing day xx
Hugs from the Ninja-Granny xx

Copyright author 2010