Fear

Gone Surfing

I was a fairly bold person in my late teens and early 20s. I seem to have mellowed with age. I used to think there was very little that could frighten me, but I’m more honest now. One of my less than rational (but still understandable) fears is large bodies of water. Lakes, deep rivers, and the open ocean are formidable places. My fear stems from a series of incidents in my youth.

First of all, I was the airy-fairiest child imaginable. I thought everything was alive in some sense. I had to rotate my t-shirts because the ones at the bottom of the drawer might get upset. Toys were definitely alive (imagine my joy when Pixar created Toy Story and my suspicions were confirmed!). And naturally occurring bodies of water were sentient. Some bodies were nice, others tried to kill you. I saw this trailer for ‘Godzilla’ when I was about 9, and it terrified me at the time. That swelling wave haunted my dreams. A few years earlier I saw an episode of “Water Rats” where someone drowned, which also freaked me out. Basically, I was acutely aware that the ocean was full of things that could harm you, and if those didn’t get you, the water itself would just crush you. Just a few years ago I went to the American Natural History Museum in New York and saw a model of a blue whale. The ocean hides those things!

That said, I enjoy swimming and don’t mind the beach, so long as I get to stay in the breakers. I had a brief and fervent stint of learning how to surf just before I went to high school, but never lived close enough to a beach for long enough to make it a real hobby. I like the bush, you can keep the beach. So where does that leave me in terms of the tea, ‘Gone Surfing’?

Gone Surfing is caffeine free, so a good one for the evenings, and more so now that winter is starting to fall behind us. The sights and sounds of the coast are calling as summer days draw nearer.

Sipping this tea, the words ‘lemony’ and ‘fresh’ come to mind, but so does ‘briny’. There is a definite hint of bitter, salty sea spray in the flavour that is off putting. Personally, I think I need to blend it with a bit of Mint Mix (3:1 Gone Surfing to Mint Mix is my guess), and see if that takes the saltwater edge off it. This is a tea that is most definitely supposed to taste fresh, but I can’t escape the seaweed like aftertaste.

Gone Surfing: 3/5
Enjoy with: Warmer evenings.