What an unwelcome surprise! I always thought Sherrilyn was one of the good ones, but it now seems my trust was misplaced. As it turns out, she’s been in cahoots with Miranda and Jennifer for months, helping them rustle up buzz for the teashop ahead of its reopening. According to Pamela, Sherrilyn has been talking it up to the townspeople, while simultaneously spreading rumours designed to keep fellow folk at bay.
The dastardly plot? To ensure as many people as possible partake of their heinous tea blends, without any sympathetic members of our community on hand to prevent this. That’s my suspicion, anyway, after talking to Pamela. I can’t believe I let Sherrilyn pull the wool over my eyes – I forgot how good she is at that, but I should have questioned her story about the Cheltenham area podiatry clinics supplying the sisters with bags of toenail offcuts. Now that I think about it, that’s obviously a tall tale.
But then, what are they putting in the teas, if not powdered toenails? It’s definitely not anything normal, or nice, or that has beneficial properties. I’m not getting my hopes up about that again. Unless… what if the whole plan is to establish a sort of notoriety around the teashop? As sick as it sounds to we wyrd folk, perhaps there’s something about toenail tea that actually appeals to the townspeople. That’s happened before.
The trick there is that people don’t truly believe that anyone would actually put toenails in tea; they just see it as a ‘fun’ novelty with ‘witchy’ overtones, which is apparently trendy at the moment. Blergh. I hate it when people associate our kind with things like that – benign yet unattractive maladies, like warts, corns and callouses. Clippings from ingrown toenails, powdered and served in teas, totally play into that category of association.
Is it so much to ask that we all do our bit to tidy up our image? We’ve had a major PR problem since the dark ages. Most of us are just regular folks like everyone else, with a slightly higher than average interest in crafting ointments out of herbs and flowers.