deathpixie | NanoWriMo 2009

Back when my grandfather was a boy, he had two great-aunts living in the Australian country town of Ballarat. Ballarat's a heritage town these days, on account of its gold mining history, all restored buildings from the 1800s and tourist places. The great-aunts were widowed by this stage and liked to get visits from the various relations scattered throughout the area. Whenever they got a visitor, they'd immediately put the kettle on for tea - morning tea, afternoon tea, middle-of-the-day tea... you get the picture. Australians, especially country Australians, are fond of their tea, especially sixty-plus years ago.

The thing about tea with the great aunts, however, was that whenever they poured you a cup, they'd leave almost an inch of space from the surface of the liquid to the rim of the cup. More than enough space for milk and sugar, if you were that way inclined. In fact, even after adding to it, you still had a generous - or stingy, depending on how you looked at it - amount of spilling margin. It became something of a joke among the younger members of the family who visited, these half-cups of tea, to the point that whenever anybody underfilled anything in their presence, it was automatically decried as a "Ballarat Cup".

The expression lingered. Long after those great-aunts became merely black and white photos in the family album, another branch of the family tree, my brother and I were complaining about getting "Ballarat Cups" when someone poured us a drink. Even now, a world away from Ballarat and those long-ago tea parties, I find myself still using it.

It's funny how things go, isn't it?