Tea and Sympathy

My favourite tea house closed down today. It was a very sad and sombre occasion.

This store has been a huge part of my life for the last few years. Close to campus, it was a favourite haunt of tired-eyed arts students and pseudo-hipsters, a standard meeting place, a beloved study break and source of deliciousness for me and my kind. Dimly lit and decked out in black and orange with huge, mismatched armchairs and the widest tea selection this side of China, it was working a kind of Chinese-brothel-meets-Victorian-opium-den vibe, and we loved it.

But their lease is up, and the announcement that they were closing led to outrage. Literally. People screamed. There were tears. One guy’s pacemaker went off. This place meant a lot to us.

This all means we now need to find a new hot-beverage-and-cake cafe. This task is harder than it sounds. Finding a place with good food, an interesting drink selection, comfortable chairs and friendly staff, all of which needs to fall within a student’s price range.

But once I got past the denial and the grief and the impending separation anxiety, there was an element of excitement. This cafe closing, as sad as it is, could make way for something new, something exciting, something, dare I say it, better. It could also make way for a stationary store or a sushi bar or one of those weird little shops that sells scented candles and bracelets made in the mountains of Peru. None of which would necessarily be a bad thing.

What I’m getting at here is that change isn’t always bad. Scary as hell. Utterly terrifying, no doubt, but it can be for the best. Maybe being forced out of my tea-and-scone safety zone will lead me to something just as sweet.

Then again, the last time a store I liked closed, they put a TGI Fridays in its place. Apparently they’re trying to make TGI Fridays a thing in Australia. Forgive me if my hopes aren’t too high yet – this whole ‘change’ thing could come back and bite me in the ass.