The Last Teabag Theory of Human Survival by Steve Way

 I know that many believe that with the Global Warming crisis becoming ever more concerning, presuming various presidents don’t pre-empt our climatic destruction by plunging us in World War, and whilst the expressions ‘eleventh hour’ and ‘thirteenth hour’ are often being referred to, I would like to propose a new term to describe human behaviour when on the brink of disaster.

My wife and I are virtually addictive tea-drinkers*, preferring that produced by a brand (I imagine we have to avoid direct advertising) associated with a large region in the northeast of England, which according to the locals at least is particularly favoured by God but where curiously not one single tea plantation exists. Nevertheless, we love their tea.

We now live in France, so the Linked-to-a-Northern-Area Tea is harder to come by. It is possible but we’d have to remortgage our house in order to be able to afford more than a few days supply. Fortunately, we have some marvellous family and friends who bring over supplies whenever they traverse the Channel, a little like the Red Cross supplying POWs with gratefully received essentials during the war. Even when sending us birthday cards or Christmas cards they often squeeze in a few valuable tea bags.

In spite of these kindnesses, we still often run short of bags to make a brew. What I have noticed then is that these last few bags (and especially the very last one) but only these teabags, are heavily recycled. That last teabag must have every single molecule of tea giving flavour squeezed out of it, to the extent that we possibly manage to split said molecules into smaller tea flavoured components.**

This never happens to the other teabags. If we extracted as much caffeine and the associated components out of all the other teabags in the box, we could conceivably keep brewing brews until the end of the century. When the box is full, or even half full, we happily use each teabag once, or twice at the most, seemingly forgetting the trauma of our last Make-that-teabag-last-forever nightmare before we gained new supplies and acting as though our supplies are endless. If we recycled each bag twice, we could probably survive comfortably between each box.

But we don’t. We never learn. Sooner or later we’ll be practising advanced calisthenics squashing a teaspoon into a teabag as hard as we can against the edge of a mug. I know we’re hopeless, but I don’t think we’re alone in our tendency to such frantic last minute madness.

Hence my suggestion for a term to describe our behaviour on the brink of disaster. Namely The Last Teabag Theory of Human Survival.

Now, when finally all of us, barring those wearing orange caps perhaps, can see that we need to save the planet, some last-minute action seems to be taking place. I’m intrigued by the work going into ‘Carbon Capture’. That seems such a Last Teabag idea. I can’t help myself think of it as ingenious cheating. ‘We’ve created a problem. But let’s not solve the actual problem. Let’s find a way of dealing with the problem caused by the problem.’ Well, if it plays a part in saving us that’s fantastic but it could also be seen as an excuse for allowing ‘business as usual’. Also development of clean forms of producing energy seems to be accelerating.

But will we be able to save the planet before the teabag runs out?

*If some method of taking it in intravenously existed, we would at least look into it.

**I have considered writing to the purveyors of Linked-to-a-Northern-Area Tea and suggesting that they include an extra-large teabag at the bottom of each box that could be mashed and mangled for even longer than a standard bag to support all those of us that work The Last Teabags to the limits of its endurance.