I feel as if I’m on a ferry, not a train. The head end of my bed seems to roll backwards every so often as the train lurches round bends.
When the knock at the door comes, The Wife is already up and ready to retrieve the morning dose of the Sacred Liquid. Getting hold of it means navigating the suitcase that wouldn’t fit under the bottom bunk and which now takes up the entire tiny floorspace, then retrieving the tray from the steward while stopping the door from slamming the tray back into the corridor.
It doesn’t look promising. There are two paper cups of hot water, two plastic-wrapped pastries and two packets of biscuits, plus tea paraphernalia including bags in sachets, sugar, milk and those long wooden stirrers that pierce the bag and result in gritty tea, if you’re not extremely careful. I had banked on being given generic non-dairy milk in one of the plastic pots with the foil lids that contain very little liquid, but which can project their contents a surprising distance. Instead, there are sachets of actual milk.
While I hum and ha about whether to have black tea or add the milk, The Wife brews hers up. The bag is in a foil sachet with a Union Jack. ‘Tregothnan’, it says. ‘THE TEA GROWN IN ENGLAND.’ I’m hesitant, but The Wife has already got stuck into hers, and reports that it’s great.
‘I like the packaging,’ she says. ‘Bold and memorable. Very excellent colour very quickly, the water temperature was spot on, though I could have done with a bit more water in there because I could have done with a bigger tea in a bigger cup. I feel like a bigger cup would have done more justice to the tea bag because I felt like I could only dip the tea bag before taking it out. It was a quality teabag that had strength. I was happy with one milk sachet. Usually I only use a quarter of a sachet because the tea’s so weak. I liked that it came on a tray, it was a little moment of Agatha Christie.’ It went down far too quickly, she laments, and she could have done with another three or four cups.
I score a sip of hers to decide on the milk question. She’s right – it’s excellent, and she makes me an identical one. The paper cup is much better than a plastic one; I have no idea why. The Wife perches on the bottom bunk, bent awkwardly and without sufficient headroom to sit up and enjoy the ambrosial brew, while I sit back on the top bunk with my cup, watching the scenery, braving cold blasts of air conditioning and trying not to spill any when the train pitches and rolls. Like The Wife’s tea, mine is over too soon and we return the tray to the steward with grateful compliments, because this lovely welcoming drink was far more than we expected.
We and our awkward luggage stumble down the corridor, on to the platform and into the lounge, where there is more of the same and the quantity deficit is repaired. We are ready to do the day.
Some other thoughts 