TEA, DOUGHNUTS AND THE MISSPENT DAYS OF YOUTH

If you've never had a Walkers Bakery doughnut from Stroud then you'll never know just how satisfying the crisp crunch of its doughy shell could be, as it oozed red raspberry jam, hopefully onto the plate below and not your top. Even better was the combination of said doughnut with a cup of perfectly made English tea to wash down each bite with.

Although it's been a long time since I've last had one (honest!) the memory of them is still vivid in my mind's mouth, for both good and bad reasons.

First the good. Just like Proust's immortal Madeleine cake from his novel The Remembrance Of Things Past, the Walkers' doughnut triggers an entire hoard of memories for me that recall idle days spent with a close friend of mine who by lucky coincidence just so happened to be able to make the perfect cup of tea. Blessed with a rare gift, my friend had the unique ability of managing that elusive balancing act between taste, strength and refreshment which is a near impossible feat to achieve for most people. There are some who think that you can just let a teabag steep all on its own without any spoon interference, but that's just lazy in my book. My friend, let's call him Mr Tea, would poke and prod the bag as if he was testing its fortitude for the task at hand. He pushed and pressed that poor defenceless pouch against the side of the cup as if he was waterboarding the damn thing. But what taste resulted from all that effort he put in.

A work of art it was.

In my darker moments I sometime wonder if I valued his tea making over the friendship. Was I using him for his prowess in the hot drinks department? Maybe.

I've also often wondered what makes that final clink of the spoon against the cup so satisfying to the human ear? As soon as I hear it, like Pavlov's dog, I begin to salivate of the prospect of tea.

Now what about the bad, I hear you ask?

Mr Tea would often stay over on school nights while we'd watch episodes of Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show and Northern Exposure before talking endless reams of bullshit long into the night.

Typically missing our alarm for college the morning after, we happily resigned ourselves to our academic failings by celebrating with a fresh doughnut and cup of tea before re-watching the previous night's episodes of Seinfeld/Sanders/Northern all over again.

Unbelievably, my father (the self-proclaimed layabout) pretty much encouraged this criminal behaviour and even supplied the torus shaped pastries like he was our very own doughnut patron. Perhaps this was our true vocation. Tea, doughnuts and the golden age of 90's television?

If myself or Mr Tea showed any concern regarding our time keeping or lateness to college, my father would simply ask us, "Are you slaves of time or masters of time?"

I guess back then we were masters.

Eventually, fully sated by our carb and tea intake, we would saunter into college and take our place in whatever class going. It was as if we were the ones calling the shots and had seniority over our tutors, or possibly we were just drunk on our excessive consumption of doughnuts and tea. While some of our peers were sniffing glue and smoking dope, we were licking jam off our fingers and necking PG tips like they were going out of fashion.

Each to their own, I guess.

I suppose the question remains, were we ruined by these sugary temptations or were they all part of the journey? The bigger picture so to speak.

These days, I don't drink tea or eat doughnuts, but the memory of them overrides those endlessly boring lessons we had at school, so yeah, there's that.

Clink.

Many years later, yet another friend of mine told me that he had hosted Kanye West one afternoon at his office studio in Stroud on behalf of a local artist he was representing as an agent at the time.

Mr West had travelled a fair distance to make the trip with the late designer, Virgil Abloh, and stayed in my friend's studio for an entire afternoon discussing the work of the local artist they'd come to see.

Rather than having refreshments and confectionaries to hand in his studio like any normal person might think to provide, my eccentric friend decided to pursue the far more convoluted strategy of walking into town (approx 20 min walk there and back) from his office to grab some take out coffee and tea for his esteemed guests.

Having asked Mr West if he would like something to eat with his takeout coffee, he (allegedly) replied "I'd like a doughnut," which you'd think would be a fairly modest request in this day and age of rapid convenience.

The thing with Stroud is, it's the early birds that catch the doughnuts. Walkers Bakery shuts by 3:30 and this anecdote took place before the Greggs revolution. Finding a doughnut after that 3:30 window shut, would have been trickier than you outsiders might think.  

Returning with something that wasn't a doughnut (probably a pretentious tiffin if I know my friend in question at all), Kanye was visibly disappointed.

No deal was brokered in the end between Mr West and the local artist. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be. Or maybe my friend should have tried harder to secure a deep fried dunker for the man.

"How could you not get Kanye West a doughnut!" I later asked incredulously.

My defeated friend, head bowed, said, "There was nowhere else close by that sold doughnuts at that time of day."

"I reckon that doughnut was the deal breaker," I proffered sagely.

He nodded in solemn agreement at my assessment of the now bleak situation.

In a parallel universe, I sometime imagine an alternative timeline where Mr West ate that iconic Walkers' doughnut.

He, probably, like many unsuspecting others who pay short visits to the town thinking they'll just be passing through, would never have left.

Believe me. They were that good.