Category: B of B Original Posts

Staple Diet

I was in the office the other day of an organisation that works in the organic food sector.

In their kitchen is a huge bowl in which the staff can throw organic waste for composting.

I noticed a teab*g in the bowl.

Now, a reasonable reaction is turn over the bowl and a few chairs and scream loudly : “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE???”.

However, my enquiring mind got in first and thought “what about the staple?”.

There it was, bold as brass (although not actually brass), a staple holding the unnecessary piece of dirty string to the filthy paper-pillow of undrinkable (though organic-certified) tea.

I wondered if it was acceptable for metal to be part of organic composting.

Turns out that metal is invisible in the organic process. It’s not seen as organic, or not organic. It just is. It’s like steel is suddenly Buddha.

Does that seem right?

I can’t see any ethical justification for teab*gs: if you care about the planet, why would you use one. But the staple, I think, takes it to whole new level.

Why are we providing worms with steel, the result of thousands of years of human cleverness? On the day when armoured worms rise up, pointing their fannings-soaked steel-tipped mini-lances at our ankles and attempting to subvert our rightful place at the top of the food chain, we’ll all be sorry.

Review: (Tea at) “The Force Awakens”

Last night, we took the time to go and see “The Force Awakens”, which is a new Star Wars film. I mention that in case you missed the scant coverage it has got in the media, on Facebook etc.

So, how to do it? Well, obviously it takes planning to attend such a film.

A few years ago, there was an incident where a cinema in the chain we were visiting banned a patron from taking a Big Mac in, on the basis that ‘hot food is a hazard”.

Clearly, it’s hard to get a Big Mac that is actually hot, and ‘food’ is stretching it a bit as well, but nevertheless, they might well object to a litre of scalding hot tea in a vacuum flask, so we handled this by hiding it in Lady Devotea’s handbag.

We also packed two takeaway cups of the cardboard ripple kind, some sugar sachets for Lady D and a spoon for the stirrage thereof.

But what tea? The Star Wars franchise is at the lower end of sci-fi. It’s  spaghetti western set in space, no thinking required. It needs a bold tea. We settled on Nilgiri Craigmore.

We suffer from the milk dilemma. When it come to milk, I am entirely given over to the dark side. No milk for me. And yet Lady Devotea insists on it. She walks in the light.

I made a split second decision to compromise in the time-honoured way that husbands do, and just do it her way.

It did help that the milk in question is a new one that, if in Australia, you should try. It’s name in Paul’s Farmhouse gold, it’s unhomogenised as real milk should be (or shouldn’t be , if you get my meaning and avoid the double negative) and it’s labelled: EXTRA CREAM: CREAM ON TOP which gives the thing the air of Monty Python’s Mr Creosote.

So, thermos flask full of Nilgiri Craigmore, topped up with creamy milk. Off we go.

Due to a mishap in reading the times, we arrived for a 3D showing and had to pay extra. However, this was offset by the fact that we had our own refreshments, and so saved the standard cinema cost of a choc ice, popcorn  and a drink, which I think they had at a Tuesday special price of $1,342,564 plus your first child.

Anyway, it’s best to wait until the lights go down to start dishing out the tea. I’m not sure if cinema ushers even exist any more, but the last think you need is some spotty faced junior Stasi officer shining a light in your eyes and demanding to know what that suspicious looking ziplock bag in your hand is.

The film started with some nastiness on a desert planet, and as the softer tones of the Craigmore were being obscured by the fact the tea was blisteringly hot, the whole thing fitted together well.

If you get your timing right, you reach the end of the first cup just as one of the characters is finishing a meal, and so you can share the longing wish that there was more in the cup.

So, do the maths. 250ml cups, two people: there’s one cup left each. Working on bladder control theory, and the fact that the film is 135 minutes long, that means the last cup should be served around the 105 minute mark.

My tip is, as soon as two characters are having a confrontation on a narrow bridge, pour. The same holds true for so many movies.

The triumphant feeling near the end of every such movie and the last sip of rich, dark tea go together well: the dark tea and the light milk in perfect balance.

So, I give the tea 5 stars. The film was quite good as well.

AT A GLANCE:

FILM: Star Warsy, has ‘droids, light sabres, good guys and bad guys and explosions.

THE TEA: Lochan’s Nilgiri Craigmore, available from The Devotea in the USA and Australia, and plenty of other places.

THE CINEMA COMPANION: Adorable

THE CUP HOLDERS: Slightly too big for a takeaway cup, so be careful

THE EXPERIENCE IN ONE LINE: A welcome respite from Christmas.

 

 

A Tea Blogger in Vendorland

Back in 2008, I started writing about tea. Not exactly professionally, but rather as a hobby. I started out as many a tea person with a ‘puter did. I wrote reviews. Originally, I contributed to a review site, and then I went on my own with Steep Stories in 2011. Around the same time, I figured, “Hey, I’m tea knowledgeable-ish enough, now. I should apply for a tea job!”

 

And I did so, figuring I would be a shoe-in.

I am job!

I was wrong.

 

The first two outfits I applied for didn’t even grant me the courtesy of a rejection letter. And those who knew who I was – either through my blog or through my visits – had a million reasons to not bring me on board. The most common rejection I heard was, “Well, you’re too talented a writer. This job is beneath you.”

 

For the record, I clean toilets for a living. Nothing is beneath me. Not even the piping.

 

I swallowed my pride, whimpered a little privately, but continued doing what I normally did. Writing about tea . . . and not getting paid for it. A year or so went by, and one of the companies I applied for posted a job inquiry again.

 

This time it was for a delivery driver – two days a week. At the time, I was mostly driving shuttles at my, then, job. Running boxes to clients all around Portland, and not saying a word? Surely, I was a shoe-in for that.

deilvery boy

NOPE . . . again.

 

The reason this time? “You’re too close of a friend to the teashop.”

 

Huh?

 

That was the first time I was ever friendzoned by a tea company. It felt weird.

 

A couple of more years went by. In that time, major things happened. Like, professional-type things! I was on various panels at tea festivals. I did guest-blogs for other vendors. I had written SEO copy for other companies – both tea-related and non-tea-related. Heck, I even helped curate a menu for a new tea bar.

 

One day this summer, I brought a charming lady friend of mine to one of my favorite tea shops. We met the owners, and a few of the other employees. They recognized her from a resume she had sent them. Then . . . proceeded to bend over backwards to try and hire her. What do you call it when a teashop interrupts your tea date? Being teablocked? Yeah, I was teablocked by a teashop. Super-awkward.

 

A couple of scant, heat-waved months after that, one of my other favorite places posted a job opening. And I matched every qualification, save one. Something to do with Photoshop. (I’m still at MS Paint levels, yo.) Before leaving on a trip, I submitted my resume.

 

I didn’t get a reply back for well over a week. The reason THIS time? “You’re such a talented writer, we wouldn’t feel comfortable making you push papers around.”

 

Refer back to my earlier statement about toilets. Add toilet paper to that. Nothing is beneath me!

 

nothing beneath me

 

Even now, after seven years as a tea writer and quasi-professional, I’m still on some sort of black list with tea companies. (Black tea list?) Sure, vendors love me writing about them, and adore getting my advice for free. But if I *LE GASP!* actually applied for a job with one of these fine brands, all of a sudden I’m looked upon as a pariah. Like I’ve stepped over some invisible threshold I shan’t cross.

 

What makes it further aggravating is that I know fellow tea blogger compatriots who have received job offers within the tea industry. Full-time ones. Lucrative, in some cases. Granted, some of these folks are more socially acceptable, charming, and Google Analytically popular than I am. But I’m still cut from the same tea-stained cloth as they are.

 

So, tea vendors . . .

 

I love you all. You know I do. There are no hard feelings – honest. I just want a straight answer for once.

 

What exactly is wrong with me? What do I need to do to be recognized? What do I need to become in order to be considered a serious candidate?

tea girl

Touché, tea industry . . . touché.

Over To You, Ladies!

The challenge to the Beasts of Brewdom to write a story was a bit of a hit. But it left a few people out. Specifically, those possessed of an extra X chromosome.

Yes, I’m talking about women.

Now, as y’all know, Beasts of Brewdom is the very bastion of equality, and we can hardly leave half the population out.
In fact, one particular woman, @jackie of Tea Trade herself, even tried to pass herself as  man called “Jack” in order to take part, which brings up unpleasant memories of the movie ‘Yentl’, which suffers from the same insufferable problem that every Barbara Streisand film does (i.e. Barbara Streisand).

So, smug overacting aside, it’s time to redress the balance.

With the same challenge…almost.

I needed to find a “masculine” alternative to the Mills and Boon romance novel title list, and my first thought were Commando Comics.

I read them as a teenager, all full of death and glory. I looked them up on Wikipedia and found this line:

The stories contain certain characteristic motifs; to mention a few – courage, cowardice, patriotism, dying for the sake of one’s country, noble actions, and making a cup of refreshing tea while in the face of danger,

That settles it!

So, I’m going to issue this challenge to all female tea bloggers: the first title you are assigned from the list of Collection of Commando Comics listed in Wikpedia here is your title. Within a week, if you accept the challenge.

As soon as I post this, I’m going to assign one.

 

Post Challenge Review

Well, we did it. A challenge was issued and four blogs were posted.

The four greatest male tea bloggers in the world* all took part in the challenge to create a non-fiction post using a title that some random person on the internet assigned to them, and the titles could only be drawn from the titles of Mills and Boon romance novels.

Here’s how it went down.

And thus ends another challenge.


 

*The four greatest male tea bloggers in the world, according to our sample survey of four male tea bloggers

When the Smoke Clears: Rita, the Rebel Bride of the Recovery Room

So, Robert “The Devotea” Godden issued a challenge – specifically to his fellow Beasts of Brewdom, and to the male communi-tea in general. He asked others to challenge us to write a blog post with a title chosen from the Mills and Boon romance novel catalog. Naturally, I took up the challenge.

challenge

Heck, I even challenged myself. The perfect title I selected was When the Smoke Clears. That would be easy. I could do something on Lapsang Souchong without much difficulty. Then Robert wondered – slightly perplexed – why I was challenging myself. He had a point. That seemed a little, uh, masturbatory. It was more fun if someone else issued the challenge.

 

And someone did.

 

Tea Trade’s Jackie challenged me to the title Rita of the Recovery Room, and additionally suggested that I date a nurse for research purposes. My mother always said I should date a nurse, but that was asking too much of li’l old me. All said, I agreed to use the title.

 

Around the same time, Rachel “I Heart Teas” Carter reissued the challenge to use the When the Smoke Clears title. Huh . . . well . . . now I had two to contend with. I mean, I could’ve just chosen one and been done with it, but I suck at making decisions. I chose to meld the two: When the Smoke Clears: Rita of the Recovery Room.

 

Over the course of a work shift, I thought of the perfect fictional short story for just such a title. Synopsis:

 

When Rita Farnsworth became a nurse, she never thought she would be sent to another solar system. Earth was near death, and the only habitable discovered world was a lush super-earth dubbed Falme-351. Unfortunately, a sentient race already existed there – a bipedal, worm/humanoid hybrid species.

worm

Technologically un-advanced, though they were, the Falmites had one advantage. They reproduced through mitosis. If one of them died, two more would take its place, thus replenishing their numbers. Human colonists were losing the inevitable war that followed.

 

Until . . .

 

A wounded Falmite was captured and brought to the makeshift hospital where Rita worked. Since she was the only one with any xenobiological experience, she was put in charge of the native’s care. And to prep him for interrogation.

 

Over the course of weeks, she and the Falmite formed a wordless bond. She also learned that they smoked the leaves of a native plant, and decocted them in hot water for rejuvenation. The native shared some with her. It reminded her of Lapsang Souchong she used to have in her youth in England.

 

The day came when the Falmite was removed from her care. She tried to inform her superiors of her findings. They told her that, “This must not get out. We cannot humanize our enemy.”

 

She never saw the Falmite again.

 

Months later, she was called away to administer care to soldiers on the front line. A Falmite settlement had been burned to the ground. Amidst the burning debris, she caught a familiar smell. Leaves from a nearby bush were smoldering; leaves from the same plant for Falmite “tea”.

 

When no one was looking, she began to pick.

 

I informed Robert that I had such a story in mind.

 

He reminded me, “Did you miss the words “non-fiction” in the rules of the challenge?”

 

“Fuck,” I replied.

 

“Indeed,” he returned.

 

Shortly after that, Niraj “Happy Earth Tea” Lama challenged me with another title: The Rebel Bride. Over the course of the day, I thought of how that would  alter the “Rita” story I had already devised. If I had thrown a romance in there, wow . . . weird. A woman falling in love with a worm. It wouldn’t have been the worst pairing out there. Heck, I read a story about a man falling in love with a primate. There was a whole genre of “literature” about women being seduced by dinosaurs.

 

But I couldn’t . . .

 

After all, the original challenge was for a nonfiction blog, and that’s what I was going to do. I just had no idea how I would find such an approach for a title like When the Smoke Clears: Rita, the Rebal Bride of the Recovery Room. Then it occurred to me.

 

Writing a fictional story was against the rules of the challenge, but writing about writing about a fictional story was not. I primed the kettle, broke out some of my stores of Lochan Tea Castleton Moonlight (my favorite Darjeeling oolong), and plugged away.

moonlight

And that, dear folks, is what you just read.

 

Challenge concluded. (With a dash of cheating.)

 

Sugar Island

THIS IS PART OF THE BoB CHALLENGE, WHERE BEASTS ARE ASSIGNED ‘MILLS AND BOON’ BOOK TITLES AND FORCED AGAINST THEIR WILL TO WRITE A NON-FICTION POST WITH THAT TITLE.

 

Sugar Island?

As soon as I got given that title, I thought. “Yep, I know what I’ll write about: The Sugar Islands.

After all, there’s no actual place called Sugar Island.

OK, so I looked it up a while later, and there is, but it’s in Michigan. Probably one of the most boring states of the US. They might as well have let Canada have that one, no one would care.

And anyway, nothing important involving tea ever happened in the USA.

Well, there was this one thing, but it’s a long time ago and they’ve probably forgotten about it.

So, where was I? The Sugar Islands.

OK, lots of islands probably grow sugar. Even Australia grows sugar, and we are the biggest island there is.

But to me, Sugar Islands means the West Indies.

Growing up in Australia in the 1970s, I learnt very quickly that this is where a bunch of men came from who were elegant, dignified, had old fashioned names like “Garfield” and “Lancelot” and the most amazingly rich and beautiful speaking voices, had great sportsmanship, were very, very tall and were absolutely committed to killing people with a cricket ball by launching it at fearsome speeds from a great height.

Some people don’t think the West Indies is an accurate description of a real place. They point out that places like Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and the like are actual countries, and that the West Indies is just a cricket team. Well, screw them. This is my post, and if I choose to use a phrase that is redolent of historical colonialism, I shall, Don’t like it? Go read some other blog about how some single mother in Michigan can’t decide between two brands of infant formula.

So, did I mention The Fable of The Bees yet?

In 1705, the book “The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits” was published by Bernard Mandeville. It’s basically one poem “The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn’d Honest” and a few notes. Bernard considered himself an economist, and given that so far he’s got four friggin’ titles for essentially one short poem, he’s clearly not too far wrong.

Bernie was a riot.

Anyway the book was ignored for a few decades, and then became suddenly popular around 1730.

Here’s a bit of it for your, er,  enjoyment:

For many Thousand Bees were lost.
Hard’ned with Toils, and Exercise
They counted Ease it self a Vice;
Which so improved their Temperance;
That, to avoid Extravagance,
They flew into a hollow Tree,
Blest with Content and Honesty.

Basically, the point for Bernie M was never mind Psalm 137:1* and all that pleasing Jesus stuff, Christianity is bad for society. Consuming as many luxuries as you can is the new mantra. Eating humble pie might get you into heaven, but you eating partridge pie is far better for the local pie shop owner.

Like many others, he was championing consumption – not the Tuberculosis kind, although that was popular at the time as well. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we can afford new shoes.

And so, someone came up with the idea of putting sugar in tea.

Neat, hey? You thought I’d forgotten the sugar. Well, I hadn’t.

So,. why would a bunch of economists want people drinking tea with sugar?

Well, here’s a clue from Portcities website:

Some 2,108 slaving voyages set out from Bristol between 1698 and 1807. The number of voyages varied, from over 50 each year in the 1730s, to less than 8 a year in the 1800s

Ok, so the height of the slave trade is the 1730s, and these economists are exhorting the consumption of luxuries, including sugar, in the 1730s. Co-incidence? No!

Basically, slave ships from the UK left port, sailed for West Africa, collected up to 600 slaves, took them to the sugar plantations in the West Indies, sold the survivors, loaded up on sugar, and sailed back to Merry Olde England.

So, if not for tea and cakes – the two main uses of sugar at the time – there would have been a damn sight less than 2,108 slaving voyages from Bristol. Not to mention the dozen or so other ports involved.

It’s basically a circular argument. without the need for sugar, there’s no need for slaves, and therefore no need for slave ships.

It’s a trend we see to this day: Create the demand and create the wealth.

Now, the obvious question is this: If we know that slavery consists of robbing people of their liberty and transporting them thousands of miles away, treating them like animals and possessions simply to make money, didn’t people in the 1700s and thereabouts feel a bit guilty every time they tucked into some sweetened tea and a bit of cake?

I know it makes me a little uncomfortable. And by “a little uncomfortable”, I mean the “Why the hell aren’t we marching in the streets and burning down buildings?” kind of discomfort.

So, who was speaking up for the slaves? I guess they might have been relying on the clergy. Here’s what one of those guys said:

“The question at issue then is, whether or not six millions of British White people, to whom rum and sugar have become a sort of necessary luxury, should, contrary to the Law of Luxury, sacrifice the use of rum and sugar to the liberty of few thousand Black people from the wilds of Africa” – From “An Apology for Slavery; Or, Six Cogent Arguments Against the Immediate Abolition of the Slave-trade, by The Reverend Alexander Geddes, 1792

With all due respect to the Rev Geddes, he was a git. He’s a prime example of why people cast doubt on the self-serving smug pricks who think a friggin’ cassock or dog collar makes them virtuous. “Law of Luxury”, indeed. I’m surprised he didn’t add some “Commandments of Comfort”.

Sure, there were other members of the clergy who were against the slave trade, but the convenient narrative promulgated now is that the shopkeepers were the supporters of the slave-derived goods and the clergy were against, and it’s not so.

And indeed, here we come to a shopkeeper:

“…..Being Impressed with a sense of the unparalleled suffering of our fellow creatures, the African slaves in the West India Islands…..with an apprehension, that while I am dealer in that article, which appears to be principal support of the slave trade, I am encouraging slavery, I take this method of  informing my customer that I mean to discontinue selling the article of sugar when I have disposed of the stock  I have on hand, till I can procure it  through channels less contaminated, more unconnected with slavery, less polluted with human blood……” James Wright, A merchant of Haverhill, Suffolk, in an advertisement the General Evening Post, March 6th 1792

Good on you, James. I raise my teacup to you. Note that I don’t take sugar.

The West Indies may now be a region without slavery, and with vibrancy and art and love and food and family and politics and cricket – all the things that make life bearable – but it was born in blood and misery.

So, whenever you’re asked if you take sugar, spare a moment to remember what was taken in the name of sugar.

 


 

*Psalm 137:1 is “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.” Yes, you’ve been part of possibly the best obscure joke in a blog ever.

Release the Beasts

I created Beasts of Brewdom five years ago.

The idea was that it was to be a place for out-there tea blogging, specifically by male tea bloggers. Yes,  it’s a Gentleman’s  Club.

Not in the sense of hugely expensive meals and saucy goings-on, but as a counter to the overt feminisation of tea and tea-drinkers. A place to write silly and have fun at our own expense. Oh, and at the expense of everyone else.

At many an afternoon tea, I find myself the only male, or if there are others there, they look apologetic. It’s a female domain, it seems. And the Internet is much the same.

SIDEBAR: Are you a young man looking for female company and capable of maths? If so, why aren’t you attending as many afternoon teas as you can? 99% female and often sadly focused on champagne rather than tea. Stop reading now, Sonny, you have a social diary to plan.

So, I created this space for three bloggers: Geoff, Ken and myself to be louder, more obnoxious, more testosterone fuelled than usual. I mean more than is usual for us, because we’re not exactly Charles Atlas types. more ‘read an atlas’ types.

I look back over 2014 and there’s a few sarcastic poems by me, one article by Geoff, none by Ken and a few by latecomer Johnny Teacup. That’s a bit rubbish, isn’t it?

So, should we let it quietly die? I SAY “NAY” in a strident, yet not equine, way.

I’ve just updated the background to a sort of gentlemanly wood panelled affair, after the Tea Trade crash that caused many of the photos to disappear.

And I’m issuing a challenge. AND BECAUSE WE ARE RUGGED, TOUGH MEN*, it’s a CHALLENGE of CHALLENGES.

I call on Geoffrey Norman, Ken Macbeth Knowles, Johnny Teacup and myself to take on this challenge. Further more, if other men are named in the challenge, I call on them to man up, not slink away like a gelded ferret.

So, Dear Readers, CHALLENGE US: Here’s how it works!

  1. Be the first to name one of the Beasts.
  2. Challenge that beast to write a post on Beast of Brewdom
  3. Select a title from this 92-page list of Mills and Boon Romance titles and assign it to them.
  4. Hassle them every day until they wrote a non-fiction BoB post with that title..

Men who are not authorised to post here can contact me on Facebook/Twitter and I’ll make it happen.

Add your challenge to the comments. I’ll be adding one straight away.
Buckle on your sword belt, Beasts, and let’s take this challenge down.


 

*More or less

The Joy of Big Balls

A cup needs an infuser, half full of leaf tea,

To make a reasonable brew, satisfactorily.

A teapot needs loose leaves all roaming free,

And a strainer, to perform spectacularly.

 

But what of those times, when the two ideas meet?

You enter a tea shop, fresh from the street,

And respond to the person whose task is to greet,

“A two-pot of Assam”, so malty and sweet.

 

And so it arrives, steam wafting up,

You grab the pot’s handle and manoeuvre the cup,

And the liquid’s not tan, but pale buttercup,

You whip off the lid for an infusory checkup

 

And there in the teapot’s cavernous inside,

You follow the chain that is tied to the side,

And see that the Assam that they did provide,

Is trapped in a tiny ball they’ve supplied.

 

“This won’t do! It’s unconscion-able”

You scream as you climb on top of the table,

“You’ve imprisoned my tea, it should be flable,*

But to twist, turn and brew, it’s completely unable”.

 

“I won’t stand for this! I’ll start a brawl!,

I’d get better tea in a boarding school hall,

This tiny contraption is no good at all,

The fine leaves are trapped in the tiniest ball!”

 

You must hope this behaviour is a lesson they learn,

What to do for tea-suppers whose pennies they earn,

Those customers whose goodwill they don’t wish to burn,

Who expect good results when they turn to the urn.

 

For all of the teapots that are served in these malls,

And corner cafés and family dining halls,

Issue dark liquor cascades, like Niagara Falls

When they encapsulate the joy of big balls.

 

Inspired by our latest tea purchase, a massive infuser ball.

Inspired by our latest tea purchase, a massive infuser ball.

 


 

*flable is an actual word meaning “Liable to be blown about”. I’m using it metaphorically. And with an air of desperation.

A Beastly Christmas

There’s a fat guy, he’s jolly, he hangs about with deer,

And he’s awfully lazy, works just once a year,

He dispenses judgement, and often good cheer,

But fail to meet his standards and you’ll get nothing, I fear.

 

He’s always running late as he covers the world,

Each rooftop has sleigh-marks of stripes and swirls,

Each stocking he’s filled for each boy and girl,

With books or toys, chocolate or pearls.

 

And for special children, those good as can be,

He leaves small packages of the finest tea,

Single estate or blends, rated highly,

From straightforward blacks to those spiced Christmassy.

 

But he never looks back at the where he has been,

Thus never spots the follower unseen,

The shadowy character, tinged with green

With a minor tremor, post caffeine.

 

Emily is sleeping;  Giddephar in her sack,

Lucy’s contains a Doke tea- the black,

There’s 1001 Nights for the twins, Rick and Jack,

And Travis has Jungpana, a nice little pack.

 

Young Thomas has a kilo of finest Risheehat,

He really impressed Santa when he rescued a cat,

And that straight-A student, smug little Matt,

Gets Aussie Ginger Chai for his milk (non-fat).

 

And in each of these cases, into the room,

This fellow creeps by the light of the moon,

Easing the sack open in his moment opportune,

He removes the tea, and off he zooms.

 

Emily and Lucy have now got a stick,

Jack just two marbles; Travis a brick,

It’s chocolate for Jack and Travis and Rick,

But the cheap greasy kind that makes one quite sick.

 

While Matt dreams of winning a Nobel Prize,

There’s movement in front of his sleeping eyes,

The top of the tin is lifted and prised,

Buttons replace the finest of chais.

 

From house to house, this odd figure goes,

He takes all the tea, away with it he stows,

The sack on his shoulder just grows and grows,

Those slumbering children? Not one of them knows.

 

And then a house that Santa’s just left,

He lifts the stocking with a mighty heft,

But he’s shocked, he’s stunned, he’s quite bereft,

He pauses and thinks: he ponders, mid-theft.

 

This child must have been awfully bad,

Her Christmas in tatters, her visage will be sad,

In the morning when she opens the stocking (it’s plaid)

And she might well feel that she’s been had.

 

What could make our anti-hero pause and reflect,

And his righteous anger rise, unchecked?,

And to mutter “That Santa, he oughtta be decked”,

“For providing such misery, abject”

 

This is no sleeping angel, here in this bed,

Her parents and teachers are all seeing red,

She’s been skipping school to watch movies instead,

And her poor little puppy was last Sunday unfed.

 

She broke all her pencils in a big fit of spite,

She and her brother indulged in a fight,

She crayoned the walls last Thursday night,

And she cut all the strings on her sister’s new kite.

 

She said naughty words when an aunt came to stay,

She pushed over a toddler at the park during play,

She ran out of the dentist screaming “No way!”,

And packed Daddy’s shoes with modelling clay.

 

But all of that pales at this Christmas time,

For Santa has committed the ultimate crime,

And the fellow that follows is working overtime,

To come to grips with this cruelty (in a manner that rhymes)

 

For the slumbering child has been treated most foul,

Quite shocking our figure who’s out on the prowl,

“I’ll get you Santa”, he (quietly) howls,

And he departs with his face all over a-scowl.

 

“Oy! You there! Santa” he yells from the rear,

“Look at me now! Don’t pretend you can’t hear”,

“I oughtta pummel your face, and stew your reindeer”,

“I’ll slap you silly, from ear to beardy ear”.

 

“What is it now?, ask Santa, quite gruffly,

“Why do you threaten me, all roughly?”,

“I have no idea why you are looming so toughly”*

“And frankly, I’ve had quite enoughly”**

 

“You swine! You beast! I know what you did!”,

“Santa, I’ve just come from a sleeping kid”,

“I just eased open a yellow tin lid”,

“And found: TEAB*GS. Foul. Horrid”.

 

Santa just shrugged “Don’t blame me”

“That kid was naughty as can be”,

“Besides I take no responsibility”,

“I’m covered by lawyers, contractually”.

 

“No child is THAT naughty, you red-enrobed*** swine”,

“You’ve overdone it, this Christmas time”,

“You’ve subjected a child to a bagged teatime”,

“So put up your fists. Your fat ass is mine”.

 

And passers-by were astonished to see,

Up on the roof, just by the chimney,

In a manner most unChristmassy,

Santa slugging it out, as hard as can be.

 

On and on, they fought through the night,

They didn’t let up until it was light,

Many gifts undelivered – well, that just ain’t right,

But this was, as they say, one helluva fight.

 

And meanwhile the children were all awaking,

And looking in sacks with hands that were shaking,

Sneaky looks, while quietly shaking,

And one particular young heart: well it was breaking.

 

“Teab*gs”, she sobbed, with tears a-streaming,

While others were still awaking from dreaming,

To open their stockings with faces beaming,

Hoping for things all shiny and gleaming.

 

A left hook caught Santa as he muttered a curse,

Regretting the teab*gs he cruelly disbursed,

And since this is the third-to-last verse,

This fight had to end, both parties were terse.

 

There is no gift more reviled and detested

Than teab*gs at Christmas, it’s evil unbested,

And for our outraged anti-hero, his courage was tested,

When both he and Santa were quite rightly arrested.

 

At the station, with its limp Christmas lights,

Combatants explained the whys of the fight,

And one was released, for his cause was right,

Whereas Santa was jailed for 300 nights.

 


 

*Sorry

**Really sorry

*** Sneaky geeky tea reference