I can’t recall my brother ever liking tea but after he decided to cut down on soft drinks, because they’d eaten all the enamel off his teeth, I guess he thought he’d give tea another try.

While he was staying with us at Christmas, I watched my him struggle to enjoy a mug of blackcurrant tea. I’ve had some very nice fruit teas, but there’s an awful lot of cheap and nasty stuff out there, which is pretty rank, and often tastes a bit like fruit squash that’s been made with water collected from a rain gutter.

My brother took a couple of sips of the tea and announced that it needed some sugar. After he’d repeated this cycle a few times there must have been about twelve teaspoons of added sugar swirling about in the liquid. The tea had transformed into a super saturated solution, with a desert of sugar filling the bottom quarter of the mug.

Then his daughter came running into the kitchen, in her mermaid costume, sniffed at the mug of tea, made a face, and asked him why he was drinking it. My brother looked really miserable – like he wished that he could still drink coke - and said he didn’t know

Eventually I took pity on him and poured it down the sink.

Last edited by backwards7; 2004-01-19 12:15 AM.