Tea!

“Do you want some hot water? – for tea?”

I turned around and saw a woman standing in what looked like pyjamas, on my side of the road dividing my tent and her caravan.

“Um. Er. I.. I don’t have any tea…”

“That’s ok. I will give you some tea. Do you have a cup?”

She smiled. “I will give you a cup”

“No.. I packed an awful lot of things, but no cup..” l gestured in the general direction of my ridiculously huge heap of luggage.

And off she went.

I wondered if I looked especially English, and what I was going to do if she produced black tea for me.

A few minutes later, I’d finished emptying my tent and was attaching the bike alarm to the bike with sticky pads and cable ties and trying not to lose the peeled off paper in the wind while also not dropping the alarm, the stickers or the cable ties, or sticking anything on wonky.

“Is minty ok?”

“Uh?” (Minty? Heh? What?Whirrrrwhirrwhirrclick.. ohhhh: ‘mint tea’)

My tealady was back, waving a teabag at me.

“Oh! Yeah, that’s perfect! Thank you so much!”

She handed me the teabag, which I promptly dropped in the grass 🙈

“It’s very hot. Be careful. I will put it on the ground. Enjoy.”

And then she was gone. Presumably to drink her own tea.

I put up my chair in her honour (and only nearly fell over once) and am now sitting and drinking posh* mint tea out of a proper china mug with cats on it, watching this quiet corner of the world get up and potter around.

It’s really rather civilised 🙂

I have an offer for somewhere to stay tonight, too, and/or store my bike while I head north.

What a great First Morning 🙂

* (= Lipton, triangle bags)