Based on a true story.

I wanted a cup of tea.

Because it’s 10:40am, every person in the office has already used just about every possible mug, so I’m left to choose between about five of them that are left, standing lonely, in the kitchen cupboard. Four of the cups are so ultra-slim that they can barely be called cups, and the other one looks like it was gnawed on by a hungry alpaca for a good day and a half before it was taken away and washed (either the cup or the alpaca. I’m not sure which).

On a whim, I select the alpaca-chewn mug. I don’t even bother checking for the presence of teabags because there often aren’t any and they’re all the same boring flavour anyway, so I’ve long since started bringing in my own. However, before I start boiling the water (we don’t have a hot water boiler – we have ages-old electric kettles. Because this is the 21st century with rocket jet packs and flying cars and …. stuff), I quickly check to see what state the sugar is in today.

I our office we have a large ceramic bowl with a lid that provides a daily dose of disappointment by generally having only the bottom 1/2 inch filled with sugar. Sugar, along with larger bits of coffee granules that are lounging around all brown and proud in amongst the sugar because nobody here has yet figured out that it might be cool to make sure ALL the coffee granules are off the spoon before they dig it into the sugar. Morons. (It bears mentioning that other workplaces with employees that have lower average IQs and salaries have managed this feat)

But no matter. Because today there is no sugar in the bowl anyway. It’s empty. All there is, is a crusty residue all around the inside that indicates that as well as people having trouble with the whole ‘make sure there’s no coffee on the spoon you’re using to get the sugar’ conundrum, they also have difficulty with the whole ‘how about checking your spoon is DRYbefore putting it in the sugar bowl, you moron’ paradigm.

There is today, however, a small silver tureen next to the large ceramic pot. I’ve seen it there before, and sometimes it contains sugar.

Today it is also empty.

Summary and conclusion: we are out of sugar.

And I want a cup of tea.

And I have two sugars with my tea.

But you know what? Screw, it, I’m going out for sugar: I don’t care about the implications, I don’t care about productivity – I’m going to walk out of the office to buy myself some some sugar so I can have a tea.

On my way out, somebody asks why I have a Che Guevara-esque revolutionary glint in my eye (they don’t use those words, but I give my reason). However, far from rallying to the cause, they absently recommend stealing some sachets of sugar from the café nextdoor. I thought the freaking British were meant to LOVE their Tea.

Still, I dismiss the temptation of petty theft. They want to know why. Why? Because I still have some shred of civilisation left you oafish antisocial thug (I do not say this)

So I take a walk in the crisp outside environment, during work hours, and find myself a nearby high-quality supermarket.

And guess what? They don’t have any sugar either. I check their baking section and I spot flour and vanilla and additives and spices and nuts and fruits and anything else you might need or want in order to make a cake or cookies,…. but no sugar. At all. Unless it’s all some kind of agave / peach extract milked through ostrich feathers or something ridiculous like that because it has no calories and is non-allergenic and costs as much as gilded truffles in liquid form.

And I just want sugar.

So I walk out of that place. But I don’t give up by walking back to the office. No… I walk for five minutes through a nearby marketplace and towards a different supermarket.

Once I get there, I consider my options. I wonder whether maybe after 18 months I might be wrong about how the British mind works and instead of checking baking goods I check the tea and coffee aisle to see if sweeteners are there.

They are not.

I check elsewhere. They ARE in the baking goods area.

So I buy some sugar.

I walk back to the office.

I get the mug.

I boil the water.

I get ready, and…

… now there are no teaspoons around to add sugar with.

(But of course there aren’t. This is the apocalypse, the zombies have won, and teaspoons are the least of all our worries)

So… I adapt, and I use a tablespoon like a… like a… I don’t know. Like a commoner.

Incredibly, I finally have myself a cup of tea, nearly twenty five minutes after I started making one. It’s in a chipped and chewed upon mug, using water from an ancient and limescaled kettle, with my own teabag, and with my own sugar. And it’s sitting on my desk, with a giant f**king tablespoon poking out of the whole thing so grandly that it might possibly cause a risk of the whole thing falling over.

But victory, nonetheless.

And then I get an email from my boss asking me to call him.

We chat for half an hour.

… and when it’s all over, my tea is now cold.

The end.
(Until I find a chainsaw and a hockey mask)