I’ve become a convert to rooibos tea. It is clearly the beginning of the end for Stan’s Cafe, the decline and fall has started. I only confess to this rooibos buiness in the knowledge that Stan, who would be apoplectic at the news, will never make it on-line.

The conversion has been a while coming. The seed was sown a couple of years ago, reading Simon Barnes’ book The Meaning of Sport. Early on (pg 47) there is a passage in which he describes how he nests in a cell like room overlooking the Athens Olympic complex, ready to cover the games as chief sports writer for The Times. This passage described a fantasy for me in many ways, but oddly the sentence that stuck with me was: “I had brought a small immersion heater, a mug and a box of rooibos teabags”. Suddenly rooibos tea took on a new status. This man has to write text under considerable pressure at inhumane times of the day/night, if this crazy tea works for him, hell, maybe it could work for me as well.

Of course the final commitment was made much easier on discovering that one of my long standing favourite pieces of commercial design is for a brand of rooibos tea. Now, in the words of Yo Gabba Gabba: “I’ve tried it and I like it”.

James