Tassology

By Jess Hodges

Having previously written about tassology, I've started wondering what the leaves might have to say to me. Always ready to experiment, I went to my favourite tea house for a very special cup of Indian blue mountain tea and got in touch with my inner mystic.

Starting from the handle and working down and around in a spiral I observed the following mystical symbols. A squid, a cross, the letters TM, a chair, Orion's belt, the big dipper, a vertical line, diglet (it's a pokemon; I can't help the times I was born into), a rabbit and a volcano.

I can't find out what a squid is supposed to mean but I know they're good environmental indicators so I'm going to take it to mean good and healthy things; the cross is a bit strange for an atheist but I am getting married so I chose to believe the tea is predicting a happy married life. A chair apparently means sitting back and looking at your life and stars give you health, happiness and success if you relax and leave things to fate. Clearly I need to just sit back and good things will come to me, possibly in a trademarked chair ™.

I'm taking the vertical line to be some kind of punctuation so we must be moving further into the future. The pokemon can only mean I will continue to be a massive geek well into my old age, rabbits are for overcoming shyness and volcanoes are for terrible arguments probably with the people who are mocking me when, having overcome my shyness, I declare my love of pokemon.

The leaves, it seems, have been kind to me. I have learned that I can expect a lifetime of relaxed happiness marred only by pokemon related bullying which my non-rabbity self will be fully equipped to cope with. I have also learned why fortune telling is normally carried out in privacy... people stare. Especially waitresses who are waiting to take your empty cup!