Madame Tea

Dance of the sugarplum pygmy

Right, where was I? Oh yes. We were having an illicit moonlit stroll through the University of Bristol Botanical Gardens when Madam Tea had shouted, and I had just been dragged around the back of a bower by her: With some trepidation I should add. And what I saw there was amazing.

A large plant, that looked a lot like a palm tree, was stood in the middle of a large round raised-bed resembling a massive cereal bowl, with the most enormous and sparkly flower I had ever seen bursting from its head, right in the centre of the spreading leaves. The remarkable bloom itself looked like a cross between a barrel sized lily, an orchid, and one of the multi-coloured metallic wigs much favoured by older hen parties, with sparking tendrils spilling from inside the half-awake corolla, wafting in the occasional breeze.

It also swung slightly, as the whole tree seemed to be walking away from its regular stand, though it moved in something of a laboured shuffle with a rotating motion that would make the junior school play portrayal of its ungainly gait accurate enough for winning a BAFTA.

I was gobsmacked. Madame Tea pointed to the little band of people dressed in bandages who were chasing the rockaway tree and explained that I'd just been hit in the jaw by a kumquat thrown with deadly intent by one of those Fruit Injars. Though above this acknowledgement that we were under attack as well, she mostly ignored them as they tried to scramble up the tree trunks all around, attempting to hurl random guava into the bowl of petals.

It seemed like they were enjoying the chaos, though I spotted one youngster looking in bewilderment at the potato he had been flinging with enthusiasm, as a little friend explained that it wasn't a fruit and that the tomato was the one that he should be using. Madame Tea just ignored them for the moment, as she gaped at the tree in wonder, and rather whispered how it was a kind of hybrid tea, one that only bloomed under two conditions: first was when the sun and moon were aligned in the 8th celestial holding position, and a blood sacrifice of a virgin goat was performed in a hula skirt just over half a mile wide. Alternatively, when 5 people sneezed simultaneously at the 6 cardinal points of the standard global pentagram, but the tree had to be at the two focal glyphs, which were either a temple in southern Chile, or a chili in South Shields. Neither of which were particularly close to Bristol, so I was stumped as to how it was the appropriate circumstances this time. Maybe it just liked the soil up on the Downs.

In hushed breaths she explained that the rarest tea on earth was sat in the centre of that tangle of tendrils; a parasitic tea rose that grew four little buds, the eight outer petals of each bunched tightly with a translucent sheen, like a little marble, showing off deep reds and green woven with shades of grey from inside the balls. Inside the buds hid a cluster of finer petals, each one marbled in one of the four prime colours of tea and when placed in hot water would open up like a lotus tea flower. But if placed in exactly the right temperature of water, the petals would open in an explosive sequence, with such force that it would stir the tea and give water the light texture of air. It could also potentially crack glass, and the stories suggested that occasionally one would shoot out of the teapot, into the sky, and never come down.

While we were both lost in this reverential depiction, the Injars were still giving it their all and by now a few had rigged up a makeshift catapult using a couple of potted pines, a spring roll catalogue, a can of silly string, and a discarded corset. It didn't look like it would work, but it did: it didn't look like it would stand, and it didn't for long. They succeeded in flinging three of their number into the air: one over the ornamental fountain, which was currently bunged with a banana, causing it to explode just as he passed by, neatly severing his strawberries with a shrapnel cherub. The second catapultee managed to manually inflate a balloon he was carrying in mid-air, which slowed him down, both horizontally and vertical, meaning he came to land with all the grace of a trapeze artist between two gas lanterns that illuminated the entrance to St Nicholas's grotto, where the Roman Catholics sometimes held communion. There was a round of applause, and an enormous whiskey scented explosion that bent the lampposts and plastered the greenhouse with fruit salad and bits of broken catapult, as the balloon touched the open flame of the lights.