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I was about seven or eight years old when my parents began giving me weekly pocket money. I got fifteen rand every week, which probably could have bought me a Steri Stumpie and a Chomp at the time (have you ever read a more South African reference?). My parents also constructed a (compulsory) budgeting system for me. Every week, my fifteen rand, given to me in coins, would be sorted into four empty Melrose jars, only one of which was designated for immediate and frivolous spending. I think that jar was only fed about three rand fifty weekly. Once teaching me their budgeting system, my parents often emphasised that my money was only as powerful as my discipline. It was my decision whether I’d be satisfied with short-term gains like milkshakes and chocolates, or whether I would like to set my sights on something larger, like LEGO sets, or even video games. Soon, I began saving any money I got, whether from my weekly (and later monthly) pocket money, birthdays, Christmases or on those random days a grandparent would sneak a paper note into my hand as we left their house after a Sunday lunch. Though I was a dedicated saver, my deposits were never very large and any toy of substance regularly took months to save for. This resulted in my calling Reggies from our home landline on an almost monthly basis to check if my PlayStation 2 game of choice was still on the shelves. Eventually, after saving my pocket money for twenty weeks, I’d walk into the store and finally buy the game I’d been eyeing. I’d then proceed to play it slowly and methodically, trying never to indulge too much in one go, knowing that I’d have to make it last until I could afford to buy the next one.
I’m a big tea lover, a tough position to be in in the overwhelmingly coffee-preferring nation of Germany. I’ve been to many a traditional coffee shop (read: not hipster, no milk alternatives) that simply serve black tea. What kind of black tea? Well, black, of course. I come from a home where we’ve got Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Ceylon, Assam, Lapsang Souchong and Darjeeling on offer, and those are just the black teas! The first time I ever went overseas, to London when I was nineteen, my parents told me about all of their highlights in the year they lived there. It included a shop called Whittard of Chelsea, a stunning tea merchant established in the year eighteen eighty-six. When I visited the branch on Piccadilly, a tea caddy for each of my parents hopped into my carry-on and flew back to Cape Town with me ten days later. Very good tea, very pretty tins. My mother then visited England a year or two later and tried a ‘carrot cake’ tea brewed by Bird & Blend, a modern, British tea company putting a twist on the classics. Every time I’ve been back to the UK since, I’ve bought myself or my parents tea from Bird & Blend (their chocolate digestive tea is jaw-droppingly brilliant). I’ve struggled quite a lot to find good alternatives here in Berlin. There’s a frightfully expensive Berlin-based tea brand called Paper & Tea, but I’d have to sell a kidney to afford one hundred grams of tea, and based on how quickly I consume the stuff, it doesn’t seem like the best long-term plan. There’s a national organic grocery store chain that does a half-decent Earl Grey blend, and another easy-to-find brand that sells a respectable English Breakfast. That said, I am still clinging to the last few grams of Woolworths tea that friends brought over in December last year.
For my first Christmas in Germany, I got a glass teapot and some tea from my girlfriend’s aunt and uncle. It was very kind and very thoughtful, and I do like tea, but the tea in question was a box of eight or so of those enormous dried Chinese flowers. The idea is that you put the flower, which has been packed into a sphere, into the glass teapot and pour boiling water over it until it is submerged, and you then watch it as it slowly rehydrates and unfolds. Dinner and a show, as it were. Unfortunately, while the tea has oodles of charm, it isn’t my favourite to drink. Nineteen months later, the box is still untouched. The teapot, though, is sitting on my desk. I’ve used it a great deal in the last year and a bit, especially in the winters, especially while rewriting my resume, especially while I was job hunting. While lovely and, again, a very gracious gift, it is an unbearable pain to clean. The spout is very narrow and has a steep curve and after a week of use, it looks like the concept of a sponge has yet to be explained to me. All this to say, I’ve been looking to replace the thing.I’ve found the perfect candidate, too: A yellow Bodum French Press. It’s five hundred millilitres, the perfect size for two cups of tea (or coffee, I suppose), and the mouth is lovely and wide—a breeze to clean. It’s cute, it’s colourful, it’s even reasonably priced!
And yet, I find myself revisiting the webpage again and again, just like I did with my LEGO games, checking if I reallywant to spend my hard-won money on this particular item. Yes, initially, when I first started handling money, my parents dissuaded me from foolish buying behaviour. Every milkshake I bought would be an extra week’s wait to save up for the video game. Later, though, it became my own system of discipline, continually sacrificing the smaller purchases in favour of larger, more worthwhile investments. In my twenties, I’ve developed a problem: what if I haven’t discovered the thing I should be saving up for yet, the proverbial video game? What if an item like this French Press is, in truth, the milkshake, and not the video game I believe it to be, and in reality, it is a waste of money? After all, the teapot I’ve got isn’t broken, just a little… meh. Somehow, despite my deep and abiding love of tea and my relative dislike for my teapot, despite now budgeting a portion of my paycheck specifically for fun stuff like this French Press, I just can’t bring myself to buy it, though I’m not sure what I should be saving the money towards either, yet. Some nicer kitchen appliance, I’m sure. There is a stunning single tang carbon steel pan that’d look wonderful in my kitchen…
Fine, fine, I caved! I bought the stupid thing and even had to pay extra for the shipping! There, are you happy, now? If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.
Message to my younger grandchildren tell granny what you want and I will make it happen,
Loved your voice over, it brightens up my day.