Tony Deyal
My maternal grandmother had breakfast down to a 'T', or rather several teas. We had cocoa tea, coffee tea, Milo tea and green tea, all made from hot water poured into large, chipped enamel mugs into which liberal quantities of condensed milk were added.
One was never sure what else came with the condensed milk. If the little plugs we made from waxed or brown paper held up, the cockroaches and ants remained on the outside. If not, you were wise to drink with your eyes closed. A similar situation occurred to one of my friends who left a sardine sandwich in the safe, not realising that the abbreviated condensed milk cans full of water into which the legs were immersed had run dry. He came from the cinema late that night, switched on the lights and found that ants had invaded the sandwich and were everywhere on the plate.
Hunger provided him with a solution. He switched off the lights and ate his sandwich. As one comedian put it, "What you expect the man to do? Complain to the Ministry of Fine Ants?"
I had the same trouble with all the 'teas', except coffee. Notwithstanding that, they were so weakly brewed that they would have qualified for ER, I had to switch off my senses to drink them. Milo wasn't too bad because every hot chocolate drink was Milo. Sometimes our 'Milo' was Ovaltine, and when neither of these was available, another chocolate substitute called 'Tono' came on as 12th man.
Horlicks
There were times when something called Horlicks appeared, but while I might be more appreciative of the name now, especially if it is two words rather than one, in those days my sense of humour was not as developed as my sense of taste.
I could never stand the sight of green tea, even though it was as fresh as a red rose. The verdigris colour and the smell like the Cockney or Jamaican pronunciation of the word 'auspice' combined to turn me into a teatotaller or the great anti-teasis. That left cocoa and coffee. Cocoa had to be grated unless it was Fry but, like new machinery, it came with its own grease. You had to grate the fingers of home-made solidified cocoa paste and mix it into a thick, oily sludge, globules of which floated above the milk and unmelted bitter bits of raw cocoa. Even though the Jamaican dancehall artiste says, "You can't stop Coco Tea," as far as I am concerned, Under Mi Sleng Teng or over it, the Cocoa Tea Chalice Nuh fi Ramp With, Evening Time, morning time or anytime. I guess Jah Made Me That Way.
This left coffee or 'coffee tea'. I must confess that until I was about six years old, I never knew the real colour of it, so nestled was it in its cocoon of condensed milk. I used to see them pour stuff from a brown paper bag into the battered, old aluminium pot from which the handle had broken off, and add water. Then later, the heavenly smell would start to flood the senses and my grandmother or my aunt would take a pot-cloth, risk third degree burns, and pour the liquid into a large cup on which sat a rusted metal strainer that might have been made of BRC.
Same old grind
Like economics examinations at university where over the years the questions remain the same but the answers change, in the case of my grandma and her coffee, she could have got a job with World Cup cricket as a grounds keeper. For us it was the same old grind for an entire week sometimes. When we went to the village wakes, we were sure that she had lent them her pot with its contents. I look back at that time philosophically. It sent a message to me that at some time in my life I would be old and weak, or maybe that I would eventually have grounds for divorce.
Later in life I went to university in Canada, and in the freezing Ottawa winter, coffee moved from a breakfast drink to a full-fledged habit. I learnt to drink my coffee black, and when anyone commented, said sexist things like, "I like my coffee the way I like my women - thick, black, sweet and strong." When people asked me if my coffee was too strong, I joked, "Put a spoon in and try to stir it. When the spoon cannot move, you can serve it to me."
8 cups a day
In the beginning, the coffee made me irritable. I moved from a one-cup to a four-cup man, and then later increased my dosage to about 8 cups a day. This is how it was as I entered middle-age. When anyone commented on my coffee habit, I would say things like, "Well, it is the only aphrodisiac known to middle-age men," and had the wives of all my contemporaries drowning them in oyster-flavoured coffee.
As my alcohol intake dropped and my coffee intake rose commensurately, I became a connoisseur, talking knowledgably the jargon according to Starbucks. From my dreams of becoming a barrister-at-law, I ended up a Barista at the Starbucks Bar. Blue Mountain, Kenya Double A, Colombia and Brazil - that time is past and all its aching joys are now no more, and all its dizzy raptures (especially after my tenth cup).
Traded to tea
Then I got mugged by my doctor. My cholesterol was higher than it should be, coffee was a possible culprit and I had to stop if I wanted to see my children graduate from nursery school. I told the doctor I was very particular about what I drink - it had to be liquid, not muck. However, I gave the matter considerable thought, wresting with my conscience for days on end, and finally traded my coffee habit acquired at the home of my grandma to a tea from Ceylon made by Dilmah.
I have numerous metal containers of various types of the stuff, which I call pan-teas (very naught-tea of me), then before I sleep I slip into something comfortable, my night-tea. When I feel irritable, I tell myself a 'Waiter' joke. The customer asks, "Waiter, is this supposed to be coffee or tea?" The waiter replies, "What does it taste like?" The customer responds, "It tastes like gasolene!" The waiter then explains, "Well, sir, that would be the coffee. The tea tastes like turpentine."
Tony Deyal was last seen telling his doctor, who had advised him to drink a cup of hot water every morning, "I've been doing that for the past four years but my wife calls it tea."
