The High Water Mark

 - The problem, said Aoife, is that you, as a culture have never moved past Del Boy falling through the bar.

Joanna kept quiet. When her friend started talking like this it was best to leave her to it. She stirred her tea, wondering if it was supposed to be that colour. She was trying broken orange pekoe, she'd bought it on a whim from a shop that only sold tea and coffee.

-Whenever you get surveyed, whenever you get asked, you can't come up with anything funnier at all

The girl behind the till had seemed impossibly confident, measuring the tea out, Joanne had watched aghast, she'd assumed the loose stuff was for show, and there were boxes of teabags. Later on she'd had to go to Argos and buy a teapot.

 - That's literally it for you lot. Del Boy falling through the bar. Dads Army. Porridge. As far as you're concerned it's never got any better than that. that was the high water mark.

I don't think I've ever seen that one, said Joanne. She was still thinking about the girl in the tea merchants. She'd worn a halter top and had a snake tattoo all the way down her back. She took a sip. The tea was lovely.

 - Not you personally, Jo, you English.

Joanne smiled. Ever since Brexit Aoife had been making disparaging remarks about "the English", despite the fact that she, like Joanne, had been born in Harlow, they'd gone to school together. Her friend had started to cultivate an exaggerated Europeanism. Learning French almost aggressively. Talking about studying abroad. The more embarrassing the Government got, the more Irish she became.

 - I mean, it's like all your cultural references, all you talk about, are preserved in some sort of sitcom Museum. Don't tell him Pike, all that bollocks

Joanne sipped her tea, and wondered why she'd gone into the shop in the first place. One minute she was walking down King St thinking about nothing in particular, the next she was surrounded by arcane machinery, grinders and scales, and vast barrels and jars full of tea and coffee, Yirgacheffe, Silvershoots, Broken Orange Pekoe.

 -  I could understand it if nothing happened since, but it's been thirty years.

It had looked like Hogwarts, she'd thought, there was something reassuring about how old everything was, wood shined by the years, heavy brass instruments, scales with weights. But at the same time it was impenetrable and unknowable, a parallel world of tea and coffee that she'd never known existed before. Suddenly she'd been gripped by a desire to drink all of it, try everything.

- I suppose that's why I'm just finding this place so parochial now, you know? Everyone wants to live in some imagined past. It's like - Aoife mimed throttling herself - so constrictive. Oh, this is nice cup of tea, you were right.

Hmm, yes, said Joanne, it's nice to try something new. She wondered if you could get a job tasting tea. She suddenly wanted to be surrounded by the age of the shop, the history of the machinery, the vast jars of leaves and beans from all over the world.

- tell that to your comedy fans. Aoife grinned - look, sorry for going on, it's just that, you know, if that's your cultural high water mark, I don't think it's much of a culture. This, though - she tapped her mug - this is all right. Why d'you get it?

Joanne shrugged. The truth was there was no reason that she knew of. She'd stepped though the door now knowing what to expect. And something had changed.

 - well, whatever, it's lovely. Here's to your new tea -  Aoife raised her mug as if for a toast. Joanne smiled and raised hers back and laughed as Aoife suggested. - here's to better jokes.