By Molly Parnell

“Tea, tea, tea.”

By Molly Parnell

Tilly was 9. She was like any other 9 year old girl. She loved dancing, riding her speckled pony “Marshmallow” and gymnastics, where she wore her velvet sparkly costume. But there was one thing Tilly didn’t like and that was TEA! Her Granny Watkins loved it. So did Granny’s pussy cat Earl (named after Earl Grey tea of course!). Tilly went to Granny’s house every Saturday afternoon. As Tilly walked into Granny’s tiny flat the smell of tea filled her nostrils. The tea pots and teacups filled up every shelf in the kitchen. Granny wore a tea cosy on her head – as a hat! This was embarrassing to Tilly especially when Granny collected her at the school gates. She waved to Tilly “Hi-de-hoo Tilly – how is my little bonnie tea-bag?” Tilly wanted the ground to swallow her up!

Back to the flat……Tilly sat down and waited for her special tea of the day and Granny’s boring tea tales. But today Granny got their coats and said “we’re going to the library my special little tea-leaf”. “Yippee!” thought Tilly, imagining picking some interesting gymnastics stories, but when they got there (after giving Earl a saucer of his favourite milky brew), Granny had other ideas. Granny made Tilly choose books about (you guessed it) – TEA!

After spending the rest of the afternoon with Granny and Earl, Tilly went home. That evening she looked through the tea books just before bed as she thought they were so drab they would make her fall to sleep quickly. However as she opened up the second one called “around the world in 80 teabags”, a strange thing happened. Stars flew from the book and a funny little man called “Yadadada” jumped out. Tilly knew he was called this as he repeated his name over and over whilst kicking up his long legs and pulling his tea cosy hat on and off his head. Yadadada was holding a teacup. He put it on the side and a minute later whilst dancing around the room, he kicked it off and smashed it! He grabbed Tilly’s hand and took her to China, famous for wonderful teas! They went on a sparkly Chinese dragon and flew to the Great Wall of China where they had bamboo tea with a family of pandas! At the end of the visit to China, Yadadada took Tilly home and gave her a tea cosy hat – the same one he and Granny both had. He said to Tilly “same time next week – after Granny’s?” Tilly nodded and looked at the next page in the book……..India!

Next week at Granny’s Tilly proudly wore her new hat. Granny winked at her and said “Tea isn’t as boring as you think, hey Tilly?” Tilly grinned and went in………