The best.

I was reading Christopher Hitchens' memoirs and I thought to myself: I'm probably never going to be famous enough to write a memoir. Even if I somehow managed to get even moderately famous, memoirs are generally left to those who are either very famous or very powerful.

I can't imagine a scenario in which I am either of these. In a sense this fills me with sadness, but I suppose also with relief. Mainly because at this point I have very little in the way of intrigue fit for the purpose of a memoir (perhaps there is some merit to the argument that I would perhaps gain such anecdotes on my to the aforementioned improbable fame). I digress.

Here is a chapter from my never-to-be-written memoir:



Dave and I made the journey to Reading to go snowboarding and skiing (respectively) in Milton Keynes. A non-sequitur, you may be thinking, but there was sound reasoning there. Reading was home to James (or Jimmy, as I generally referred to him, unsure if this was his preferred mode of address or simply a call to his past, a name he could not effectively shake).


I would often, in the past, refer to Jimmy as the same person as Dave. The truth is far from it, but they do share uncannily similar vocabulary and intonations. A veritable conjoined idiolect, if you will. Equally, they both have a passion for mocking people.

Born at a similar time, I believe, though could be mistaken, they had been friends virtually from birth, so perhaps their similarities are somewhat to be expected.

As an addition this I can recall a taxi journey home, I forget whether it was before or after these events. Violently and through drunken tears Dave informed me and another of our friends, that Jimmy was his only real friend and the only one who he expected to stick by him. Jimmy was in the taxi at the time, and it made for an awkward few minutes, before Dave ordered the cab to halt and stormed off into the night, Jimmy following shortly after. Fitting in a sense.

Jimmy is a skilled snowboarder; practiced and accomplished. We were to visit the Milton Keynes snow-dome with him. But I don't wish to talk about skiing, or indeed Milton Keynes. Fascinating as that anecdote could be, I have something to talk about: an incident in Reading.

Jimmy lived in a house with three females and a male. I use these medical terms rather than boy/man or girl/woman/lady, as these are loaded with connotations, mostly inaccurate and confusing to the context. If someone says "girl" I think of a child, or at most an older teenager. If someone says "woman", I think of a professional looking female perhaps in her mid-to-late thirties. If someone says "lady" I think of a fifty-plus-year-old with silvering hair. "Female", I think, has a much more general and pleasant connotation.

Sam, the male, was away. I have never met him, and probably never will, despite, I believe, stealing some content from Call of Duty Black Ops from him.

Of the females I can certainly remember Amy and Emma were two of them. The third, I have trouble with, with is a shame because I recall her wearing a Jimmy Eat World t-shirt. She, sartorially at least, had seemed the most interesting on our first meeting. I'll guess her name was Sarah, as that seems so common a name for younger females these days.

She was, however, also the least interested in socialising with us while Emma and Amy hung around us much of the evening.

Emma is the subject of the anecdote. Not because I have thought on her very much after the event. I haven't spoken to her since, but she did do something rather remarkable in my life; something I never got the chance to properly thank her for.

Emma, as I recall, was attractive. Disappointingly she was also clearly attracted to, and affection towards, Jimmy. I use disappointingly perhaps wrongly because I did not feel specifically attracted to her (though was she was attractive and female, the only requisites in those heady days) I just generally feel a very, very slight twinge of sadness that every straight female does not find me attractive.

Of course I realise universal attraction would be an unrealistic expectation even if I were much more attractive than I am. But the very fact that they are female and attracted to males, and I am male but they are not attracted to me, suggests either that there is there is something wrong with me or that there is something wrong with all of them... and I don't like those odds. A melancholy thought, certainly and one I won't dwell on.

On the morning of the first night I stayed there, and we are getting close to the incident. 

Jimmy called out a request for someone to make us tea. I'm not one for chauvinism, personally, and I was rather hoping for a chorus of mocking from the females. To my lasting sadness, Emma opened the door and asked us submissively how we liked our tea.

In this situation I would usually play the 'kindness' card and either politely decline, or offer to make, or at least help make the tea. My altruism was unfortunately overpowered quickly by desire for tea and aversion to move.

"One sugar please," I said, in my most feminist-sounding voice.

I don't think too much on tea. I like it certainly. I prefer it with sugar, but have been having it without at work because I have so much of it (out of habit rather than love). Some people really love it though, and I wouldn't put myself in that camp. But I certainly can tell, and appreciate, the difference between good tea and bad tea.

When Emma returned she brought with her my tea. Without any doubt the best cup of tea I have ever had in my life.

Tea is something I have almost every day, in fact, certainly at least three times most days. My very basic estimate suggests I must have had in excess of 3,000 cups of tea in my life.

For me to be able to say, with clarity, which of those was the best, I think is relatively important. There had to have been something amazing about it. But I don't know what.

As far as I know (she went out of the room, and I didn't see anything between her asking me how I liked it, and her handing it to me) Emma made that tea, and made it brilliantly. Was it the tea-bag? Was it the sugar? Was it the milk?

I just don't know, and I doubt I'll ever know. I can't really bring it up with her now. I could probably fairly easily find out her name and ask her via Facebook, but I must doubt that her memory of the event would even be available. She made tea for one of Jimmy's friends, I doubt she even remembers that. Let alone the details of how she made it.

By accident I stumbled across the perfect way to make tea, or the perfect tea-maker. I doubt I'll ever speak to her again.