Tea For Sarah

Sarah lives on the other side of the world, so went don't get to spend much time together.

She asked me to make up a story about us going for tea. I wrote this today on the tube between Stratford and Waterloo.

He smashed the device against the wall. "Fuck the iPad!" he declared. "Fuck the iPad" he screamed again, into air, because he was not currently able to tweet it.

He bolted from the room and turned up at Sarah's door a moment later.

She opened the door. "We're going to walk the fields," he told her. "I have work to do," she lied. "I only have an hour."

He was all pumped up on something, whatever it was, maybe dislodged neurons firing all crazy by mistake. "We're going for four days," he said. "I'm bringing my laptop", she replied. "Fuck the laptop!", he screamed, as he pelted it deep into her living room wall.

They left for an adventure, wondering how they would explain it or market it or rationalize it to friends later. It would be two days before they realised all that stuff didn't matter. This was between them and Mother Earth as they darted across endless fields, debating the world and its rules until they realised eventually that it has no rules.

They stumbled across farmers, walkers and dreamers. They had lunch with George and Anne who were exactly like them but thirty years their senior. Lunch was finished and off they screamed into the falling night.

They tiptoed across a silent mountain somewhere out there in the grand outdoors of the world when he turned sweetly to Sarah and said, "I want a tea". Her imagination sparkled at the thought and their minds became one, with all their neurons pointed directly towards the vague sense of a town ahead where maybe there was a tea waiting.

They stumbled down the darkened edges of the world, desperately in search of the magical tea. It was 3am and nobody would usually be drinking tea but life in these random days was proving anything was possible.

They landed in a sleeping town of pre-war housing and unexplainable floating auras and felt the tea was in reach.

They looked for clues of lights and laughter but nothing was to be found. The waves of tiredness crashed into them just as daylight rose and the cafe at the end of the world opened.

Marian welcomed them with open arms like they were the first visitors ever and maybe they were. When they asked for tea in quiet desperation, Marian, the Queen of Nowhere, nodded knowingly and quietly slipped away into the basement where the magical tea surely waited.

He looked at Sarah, wondering what all this meant. She looked at him, wondering where the tea was. His eyes danced across the window view, relaxed and dreaming of moving in to the tiny brown house that sat stubbornly outside like the soul survivor of a day all gone.

"Two teas", said Marian, as if it was the simplest sentence in the world.

They looked at her and smiled. And still there was one more day of endless adventure before they'd climb back into life, which eventually they did, but it was always different after that.