The Links Between Tea and Brexit
1. Herbal
As news broke today that there has been a further decline in the numbers of people drinking so-called builders' tea, a scientific study was published to show that only consumers of the old fashioned "cuppa" voted for Brexit in 2016. Sensationally, the study also confirms that a three year growth in sales of designer coffees and herbal fruit juices could be the sole reason why in a second referendum a majority of people may vote Remain, although there is some way to go.
2. Cracks
According to the ground breaking study's author, Professor Woke, the findings prove that Brexitism is not, as previously believed, simply a football hooligan problem. Rather, it is a symptom of a wider social and cultural malaise. Further, she says a ban on the drinking of "char" among those who provocatively choose to be old or living on council estates would merely begin to address the problem. Ultimately, enforced repatriation of anyone with a dodgy mug might be the only solution, especially if they are also in the habit of regularly displaying their arse cracks which, she says, all of them are.
C. Rosy
Woke, it transpires, is no humdrum drinking habits sociologist. She started her career as a working single mother who not only cared for four children but educated them all herself at home. At the same time, she thrived in as many as four jobs. After her 9am-5pm "daytime career" in motherhood, the Nanny shift began. This enabled her to head to her local Costalot coffee shop where she was a senior barista before driving up the A1 at around 7pm to buy Happy Chef restaurants. She turned them into a chain of orgy emporiums. Today, she admits that building the Grey Shades 50 brand was "at times a bit of a challenge" given that at 5am she would have to be back in Central London. There as a senior barrister she was attached to the world renowned Mandelson chambers, working 5am-8.45am. "But actually I had nothing to do between 2am and 4am". So to ease the boredom she sat in laybys observing lorry drivers buying "rosy lee" from roadside kiosks.
4. Bush
"I could see they were conflicted" she tells me. "First, they were not builders and yet they were buying builders' tea. Secondly, they revealed in their conversations - I could hear them all clearly through my ear trumpet - that they enjoyed cricket between England and Sri Lanka. They were definitely not racist in that way. So when they did that undercover monkey thing of "do you know the piano is on my foot? - you hum it and I'll play it" while weeing behind a bush, I initially assumed it was a kind of mental illness. It was only after several months that I realised that was caused by the tea itself".
5. Woke
Given her experience, Woke who is now a wholly independent scientist at the University of Chipping Norton was initially approached by T-Krucifi, a leading global fruit juice brand, in 2017. Belgium based, it suggested that there could be a possible link between tea drinking and English anti European sentiment. Obviously she was intrigued. But it was only when the conglomerate was able to secure money for the research from the neutral opinion poll company, More Labour, that an unbiased study seemed doable. "We were all keen to ensure that it wasn't a knee jerk anti Brexit thing", Woke says.
vi. Vesuvius
By then Esmerelda, 18, was at Oxford, Fifi was at the tender age of 13 at No 1 in the pop charts and Woke's sons Basil, 10 and Vesuvius, 5, had shown themselves more than capable of looking after themselves. "But I waited" she says "until I was absolutely sure that they had managed to float their Artificial Intelligence company on the stock exchange". Even Nanny had moved from changing nappies to being a High Court judge specialising in constitutional law . Consequently, Woke had the time and the resources to produce the most comprehensive study of its kind with many specific "nudge" like recommendations.. It includes, she explains, an extensive withdrawal from tea agreement and a political declaration which can be read easily by everyone from old bastards and chavs to navvies and truckers obsessed by the old Empire.
G. Lollipop
So, yes, Woke has the vision thing. She believes strongly that national security depends on Britain being in the EU. And she sees the road map away from, quote, "the Brexitism virus" as being principally one of encouraging the plebs off tea and shifting them on to elderberry. "We can do it" she told me "but, if not, they shall just sail on the good ship lollipop to some ghastly plantation. All 17 million of them". It is impossible to be in her company and not find her enthusiasm infectious.
h. Service
As our discussion was coming to an end, she suddenly threw her arms into the air so that they not only swayed in rhythm with her earrings but as the earrings jangled they produced a perfect rendition of "Ode To Joy". "That's pretty impressive" I said. "Where did you learn it?" She simply winked while coquettishly holding up a picture of South Mimms service station. Incredibly, this pretty, diminutive figure is not yet even 35. Surely her damehood can't be very far around the corner.
9. Vegan
Feeling peckish, I drove up to my yurt in Biggleswade with her final words ringing in my ears : "who needs a trunk road cafe selling English breakfasts and "brown paint" when you can get a melon water with a furry vegan bacon sandwich?" Stopping off for a wee along the way, all the voices I heard were Spanish and Irish and Polish. But as the wind rustled gently through the roadside greenery, I swear I heard the monkey and piano thing in the distance. It coincided with the tinkle of splashes on my trainers. Woke was right. It wasn't racist. But she was wrong on its "illness", It was just England as we knew it before toffee cappuccino, strawberry water and populist sado-masochism. You could stand up a spoon in it.
(The views expressed are purely those of its author P G Justinian Trollop - if you think it's bollocks tweet off to him, not us)
