Hands meet on a pub table.My favourite green tea is called Genmaicha. It is flavoured with roasted grains of rice, which give it a toasty aftertaste, not far removed from the finish of some Champagnes, notably Bollinger. I don't have the opportunity to drink much Bollinger nowadays, but Genmaicha is a surprisingly successful substitute, with the added advantage that it clears the brain rather than fills it with delusions. There is a quality of refinement and simplicity about green tea, and I have found that the leaves, when reused, make as good, if not a finer, and more comforting, a drink.
People tend to look much the same to me nowadays. My eyesight is still passable, but there is a tendency to homogeneity in their clothes and accessories, their voices and their gait. So when two young women in anoraks approach me in Calverely Place with the words: "Hullo, how are you?" with emphasis on the "you", I am fooled into believing that they are acquaintances. "Hullo," I say trying to stress, because it declares my true state of uncertainty, the first rather than the second syllable of the word. Then I realize that in fact I don't know them. Leaflets are flashed: "I'm Cherrie. We're from the Church of Jesus Christ". I am too old to be converted or even to discuss the possibility. They must be no strangers to rejection, but I feel, as I take my leave, that I am saying goodbye to something disarmingly innocent, in a world which is far from innocent.
4 comments:
Cheers but does not inebriate! The green tea sounds nice. We tend to put a cardamom pod in ours, but often here they put mint in it, which is something of an abomination. It would probably be worth looking out for some special stuff.
I don't find proselytizers as benign as you do. For me they are a symptom of a kind of disability of the human psyche, an inability to even begin to see the real things of the world. I find them truly sad.
Lucy Mint tea, made with fresh mint leaves and nothing else is also good. I have been meaning to try cardamom.
20th Century W You're right of course. I surprised myself by not being less rude, and then again, the sword, the thumbscrew and the rack, were absent from the armoury of these crusaders.
Green tea in my lidded japanese cup. The act of drinking becomes special. I like the sound of your flavousome brew.
That image is very, very touching.
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