things&people_Teabag&Lorna

TEABAG & LORNA

They met for tea every Friday, but each time, just as the second brew was ready, Lorna’s lunch hour was over. For the first of these meetings she’d spent a considerable time choosing what to wear. Anders arrived on a beat-up old bike in a grey sweater peppered with moth holes – and Lorna resigned herself to having made another friend, a dear friend, but just a friend all the same. Their conversation was always easy, meandering from Japanese cooking to Chinese medicine to Lorna’s Amatsu exams to the flavour of the steak and wine Anders had ordered after an abstemious week on a Buddhist retreat. It was this refreshing absence of earnestness that Lorna, a self described ‘spiritual but no nonsense Yorkshire lass’, loved. Their tea dates evolved into date dates and they moved in together. Every night they had tea, laughing over the increasingly naff aphorisms – ‘nafforisms’ on the tags of their herbal Yogi. One uncharacteristically balmy London night, Anders returned home with flowers and Prosecco. He made a lovely, lazy supper of leftovers and they sat out in the garden. By 10pm Lorna was sleepy from the booze, she said she’d skip their customary tea and head for bed. Anders suggested she get ready for bed and he’d make tea. So Lorna sat outside in her pajamas while the kettle boiled. Anders read the tag on his tea ‘ “Truth is everlasting”…what does yours say?’. He smiled as she read out, ‘After drinking this tea, would you like to marry me?’.

01 Feb 2016