Spill Chai Latté is no Eastern savant shrouded in the arcane miasma of I-Ching philosophical mysticism but he might well have been, such was the impact of his influence upon my mortal being this very morn. And me all altruistic and giving - the benevolent archetype in every sense of the word.
Y'see - we (my lovely and I) have this thing where, during the week, first thing in the morning, we drink the magical elixir of honey, lemon and cinnamon (all infused with boiling water, you understand) which, although invigorating and refreshing and may reach the parts that count, is not by any stretch of the (most feverish) imagination, coffee.
But on this day it felt like a deviation from the norm was the natural order of things and it took little persuasion, none at all actually, to convince my lady that she might consider coffee in favour of the usual toddy.
And so with the the still winter twilight suffusing the sky, having wrested myself from that realm somewhere between Morpheus and the posh British narrator of Jeffery Archer's latest audible offering, Best Kept Secret where the narration convolutes in concert with my mind state gravitating between REM and the actual plot line, I tumble out of bed still wired to the iPod courtesy of my silicone cabled Sennheiser ear-set and stumble toward the kitchen avoiding the usual posse of (apparently ravenous) cats.
After completing the ancient masculine ritual of testes VULNUS urinae, commonly known as scratching your nuts while pissing, I fed the cats (read: topped up the partially depleted bowls which they refuse to consider once the inner section diminishes although 50% of the pellets nestle quite undisturbed around the perimeter of the bowls, consciously rejected until desperation drives the cats to grudgingly nibble in these regions in that everlasting psychological struggle between human and feline). The cats almost always win.
While I am heating milk in the microwave and shovelling powdered chai latté into my knee-high tubular mug, I ponder the question of adding sugar (or in our case xylitol) to the mix. Karen likes her coffee latté'd as well. I usually just have rooibos tea - black and unsweetened and yes, I like it like that. But today I am going to splash out with a super-sized measure of viscous, creamy, sugary refreshment.
However, somewhere in a shackled box in the basement storeroom of my mind lies a small, gnarled, paranoiac gremlin who insists on shouting through the cobwebby gloom all the things that I shouldn't be doing to the body that maintains his vitality. Why, I'm not exactly sure as one would've thought that given the nature of an existence in perpetual bondage he'd be keen to be free of that particular state of being which might be induced through the ingestion of sugars, preservatives and all manner of poison masquerading as contemporary food and beverages.
But no, he squeals and complains like a regular Radio 702 listener after a South African general election or Pravin Gordhan's annual budget announcement.
I ignore the little bastard (although I can still hear him) and add another heaped spoon of the composite of lactose, sugar, whey powder, skimmed milk powder, unhydrogenated coconut oil, flavouring, black tea extract, salt and sodium phosphate cunningly packaged as "sweetened instant chai latté" into my mug before bombing it with nuked low fat milk and boiling water in equal measure.
It smells tip-top and Karen's coffee also tastes pretty darn good.
I wander (lonely as a cloud or something) back widdershins toward the bedroom, deposit the mugs of steaming beverage onto the bedside tables and tumble back into bed between cats now engaged in duvet surfing (with much clinging thrown in) as my legs create perfect undulating waves for this very purpose.
And to the iPad for the early morning surfing of an altogether more ethereal nature than that of the cats, their disgruntlement at being tossed about now quelled as they nestle ever closer to the heater in the corner of the room.
I am distracted. What can I say?
I reach out, I grasp the iPad, I swing it in my general direction but hell and fiery damnation if the charging cord doesn't develop a mind of its own and sweep my steaming brew onto the bed and against my buttocks, the one of the left persuasion, eliciting from me all manner of shrieks, profanity and gymnastics which had Karen hopeful momentarily until she realised that this was not antiquated Pictish foreplay but rather an expression of extreme unhappiness as my glowing arse cheek deftly moved out of the path of the frothing cream tsunami rapidly flowing along the mattress.
It's hot, it's sticky and it's fucking messy - no not carnal interaction of the biblical kind - the poxy chai latté shite that has now migrated through the sheets and into the mattress, down the bedside table, under the glass of the bedside table, onto the floor, under the rug and, if it had its way, would be trickling toward the Amazon River such was its desire to be an uninhibitedly free-flowing waterway.
There was a mere mouthful left which I quaffed in a single swig. Man, it was sweet.
I thought I heard an echo in my head saying: I fucking told you so!
But I'm sure I must have been mistaken.
Karen is customarily quiet at these times until the ranting or gesticulating has abated and she offers no platitudes or judgements of the events she has just witnessed, exhibiting mercurial restraint, knowing that the bed linen was changed just two days ago.
While I wipe with a towel, curse with a passion and stride with a purpose back to the kitchen, I can hear the gremlin laughing throatily in that echoey prison of his.
It merely remains for me to ponder the Tao of Spill Chai Latté and whether this was invoked by the universe (initiated by me) at some profound and unknowable level that has disavowed the ingestion of enlightening-inhibiting synthetics - which does seem eminently more agreeable than admitting that I am just a clumsy fucking dickwad who should pay more attention to what I'm doing.
But I relent. I make a plain cup of rooibos tea, no milk no sugar and head back to the bedroom to commence this missive. I can still discern the aftertaste of the chai latté on my palate but remarkably, the laughing and the shrieking from elsewhere within my head has mercifully ceased.
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