Let’s do this together

First they came for our fuel bills and I did not speak out. Then they came for the weekly shop, and I stayed shtum. But now they’ve come for our national drink – the cup of tea – and I refuse to be taken for a mug any longer.

I was running to catch the train out of Waterloo station back home on Friday night when I stopped briefly for a brew from one of those late night snack bars that sell dry, stale baguettes that rip the roof off your mouth. The only similarity between them and real UNESCO-status French baguettes, is they’ve been hanging around as long as world heritage sites.

I went to pay for my tea with my phone when I spotted £3.45 had been rung up by the busy server on the till.

“Is that for one tea?” I checked. He nodded. We’re not talking about an infusion of rare white tea buds drunk by Chinese emperors – it’s a brew made from sweepings off the tea factory floor for builders.

How much can a tea bag, some hot water and a splodge of milk cost from a takeaway? It’s not like I’m paying to sit and enjoy the ambience of a latenight station among the pigeons and live train announcements – I was on 23.05 vomit comet home watching drunk commuters fall asleep into their smelly burgers.

Apparently trouble brewing in the Red Sea is to blame for the price hikes, but this is nothing short of a national emergency.

I’m clearly going to have to take a leaf out of my thrifty mum’s book, who travels around with her own tea bags in her hand bag and cheekily goes into burger joints or coffee chains and asks for a cup of hot water.

“I’ve not been charged yet,” she said, tickled by her genius cash-saving plan.

“But isn’t it good manners to order some food?” I asked her.

“Oh no, I wouldn’t eat that rubbish,” she said. ■ Where were you when you realised everything had got too expensive to live? Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

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Yours, Siobhan