{ this is where i get off }

Me and my entourage have created an amazing new superhero, the adventures of whom will be partly chronicled here, and partly exploited for mass personal gain at an epic level.

The persona is that of the “Tea-Mistress”, dispenser of tea leaves and bringer of sustenance. Any super-heroine needs an arch-nemesis, and as a result, we have created Dr Coffee : devilishly attractive, and dastardly vague.

Tea Mistress is currently an undergraduate student, whom many simply believe to be addicted to the fatal substance. However, when a tea-related-distress is picked up on her internal tea-sensor, she slips quietly from her lecture, tears off her clothes revealing her tea-maid costume below, and flies to the scene of the emergency; delivering tea based justice wherever she sees it necessary.

A teabag in the eye of that assailant, scolding hot tea over the animal who just savaged poor Mrs Fenchurch’s poodle and a sugar-cube into the sugar-free pop of that diabetic who swindled millions out of their pensions.

Her tea-maid costume is a work of genius ( coming from our collective minds, this should be taken as granted ). A checkered light and dark blue pattern adorns the top half of the dress, with the frills over the very upper arms being made out of the papery material used for tea-bags. The lower half of the dress is in skirt fashion from the same tea-bag material, layered consistently upon the tops of each other, ruffled to produce a spectacular effect that neither chainsaw nor wolf-jaws can tear through.

A chest-pocket, attached by Velcro, in the shape of a teapot contains an assorted collection of teabags, neatly filed into alphabetical order by flavouring. The general impression is of a French Milk Maid.

The evil assailant, Dr Coffee, is less well defined ( as he was, admittedly, an afterthought ). A latex full-body suit of dark coffee-bean brown is donned, with an identical Velcro chest pocket, this time in the shape of a coffee bean. Whilst the obvious option for weapon here would be a bum-flap from which is secreted the disgusting brown substance, we have opted for a pea-shooter, from which the assailant can launch, at high velocity, the beans of infinite doom. His pea shooter and coffee beans are stored in his chest pocket.

The beans have various destinations, but of most import to us are the ones that result in general chaos and frenzies unknown. The eyes of train drivers, the drinks of those going cold-turkey, the earholes of formula 1 drivers and the throats of notable singers. The extent of the chaos that can be caused by the dense beans is unfathomable to our meagre human minds.

Dr Coffee cannot fly, because he sucks ass. But he can scale buildings using his bare hands, in much the same style as spiderman, but he leaves, instead of web-marks, sticky coffee stain rings, allowing the Tea Mistress an easy chance to follow him.

Whilst the two enemies flirt with each other’s presence very rarely, they each know that the other is their sole enemy in the hot drinks based world ( the seducing temptress Hot Cocoa suffering a salmonella infection earlier in the year, culminating in her swift withdrawal from the race ) and plot to rid the world of their thorn to claim dominance.

In the first episode of this unbelievable and quite frankly ridiculous duo’s adventures the Evil Coffee Doctor chooses to… erm… uh… *one moment*

When I browse through the shelves at my local book seller I repeatedly see books detailing how to survive robot, zombie and possibly cheesecake revolutions. I fear that if any of these situations came to pass, society as a whole would be well equipped by the amount of literature available on the subject.

However, as an avid Fantasy fan, I fear something different. I fear Rayne Summers syndrome, waking up as a cast member in High Fantasy. Supposing, I did casually wake up in Middle-Earth, Randland or Westeros… what would happen then?

I pride myself on being prepared for events that will never come to pass, so here is my list to survive High Fantasy.

1. Stick them with the pointy end. Are the wisest words of John Snow, Bastard Of Winterfell ( A Song Of Ice And Fire ). It is important when fighting enemies, soldiers, and generally random and aggressive creatures that you encounter on your travels, to push the pointy end of your stick, sword, magic bean ( whatever you have to hand, fnar, fnar ) into them. With as much pressure as possible.
2. You Run Away From Dragons. I see too many people admiring, and working with Dragons. Be they the fire breathing kind, or merely teenage boys labeled as “The Dragon Reborn”. It is common sense of modern day times that you dislike anything that has more teeth, and faster legs, than yourself. When you see a dragon, you want to make sure the only thing it can see is your back. Speeding away in the opposite direction.
3. Deep, Dark & Mysterious Caves. I always wince in suspense when the brave men on the Discovery Channel walk fearlessly into small, previously undiscovered caves with no knowledge of what is inside. Whilst it strikes me as foolish, I would do the same, with a small army behind me. However, should Moria ever tempt me, I would not rise to the task with merely an elderly wizard ( who never shows that much strength in the long run anyway ), a couple of soldiers, midgets, dwarf and cross-dresser in tow. Spare yourself some hassle in fantasy worlds, go the long way round.
4. Never Trust A Cackle. Once somebody starts to cackle, Terry Pratchett can easily tell you that they’ve cracked. Advice from cackling ladies, or wizards that laugh “muhuhahaha” ( the evilest version of “mwahaha” ) should not be trusted. The opposite action should be put into force.
5. If You’re Not A Leading Character… you can count yourself as dead when a battle begins. If you’re not the head of an army, are too old, cackle randomly or suffer from horrible depression you are pretty much stuffed up the exit hole with an aubergine when it comes to survival chances in many fantasy world battles. If it was me, I would quickly desert before the big flying dragon descends and obliterates me, without a nod of acknowledgment anywhere to my existence. Running for mountains, caves ( as long as they are previously explored and well-lit ), other countries, or even emigrating before a major battle is a choice course of action. The good guys will win anyway regardless of whether you were there. An exception to this rule is in Westeros, where if you are someone who heads an army, appears invincible, or does no harm to anyone, you will die. Regardless of where you run. Infact, if you wake up in Westeros, you are pretty much condemned to death.

This list is by no means comprehensive, and it will expand as time goes by and my literary horizons expand. If you’ve any suggestions as to further ideas for it, let me know.

Stand Back, We’re Going To Try Science.

Whilst we have no chemical evidence to support this, and possess only vague estimations of the average cheesecake slice consumption per capita of our comrades, we are convinced that Cheesecake Consumption has a direct relation to the sanity of an individual.

We have developed this graph as a means of our theory:

As you can see, sanity reaches a peak at 1.75 slices consumed per day, and once an individual passes this point, which I like to refer to as the “james barrier” they rapidly loose sanity due to the excessive dairy consumption, spindling out of control below the threshold of sanity “0″ and into insanity.

Whilst I have no evidence to support this of yet, I await volunteers.

Many thanks to my colleagues who helped nurture this scientific theory.