You wouldn’t believe what I just heard from Sherrilyn over the hedge. Word has it that Miranda is back from her sabbatical, and has brought her sister Jennifer with her. This can only mean one thing: Miranda is rebooting the Wyrd Teashop.

That might sound benign to you, or even rather like good news. Who doesn’t enjoy a nice cup of tea in a quaint little shop? What you don’t know is that Miranda and Jennifer have a secret ingredient that’s included in all their teas. Actually, it’s not really a secret at all. The ingredient in question is toenail clippings.

That in itself wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing in the world, as long as they were clean and healthy and ground into a fine powder indistinguishable from baking soda. We’re pretty open-minded around here. The issue is where the nail clippings are sourced from – namely, local podiatry clinics. Cheltenham is a smallish village with a high number of podiatrists per capita, possibly due to the preponderance of ingrown toenails in the area, and that means there are plenty of toenails to be collected and fed right back to us.

Most of the townsfolk don’t know about this, mind you. Sherrilyn says they ought to have cottoned on from the name of the teashop, although in my opinion the toenail thing is not something to associate with wyrding. If word gets out, it’ll give the craft a very bad name, and we might even be driven out of the village again. I’m so over that happening.

Is it so much to ask that we not have to always be associated with warts, fungal nails and other minor maladies? This is the kind of thing that has caused us to be shunned for centuries, despite having very little basis in reality since the dark ages. Even then, we were the ones curing the fungal infections and warts and plagues, not causing them. Sheesh… talk about ungrateful.

Miranda and Jennifer are the exception with their toenail tea, not the rule. I’m not even sure what purpose it’s meant to serve other than to be gross.

Hi Mom and Dad,

To answer your question…no. It’s not as hot here as everyone thinks. I think if I’d taken that job in Brisbane it’s be different, but Australia is so big, it has different climates depending on where you are, just like America. So Melbourne is like…Seattle, I think? Anyway, it’s winter here. Not much sun, loads of clouds.

Big spiders, though, so you can tick that one off the list. Apparently you see more of them in summer, so not looking forward to THAT. Oh, and people really love their sport, so tick that one off as well. The most common foot conditions in Melbourne are athlete’s foot and Achilles tendinitis, which seem to mostly be caused by that thing they call ‘football’. Oh, and netball. That’s really popular here, and it’s really hard on the feet and the ankles. Often we get people coming in with conditions bad enough that we can’t just give them orthotics and move them on. There are podiatry clinics around the place, like in Cheltenham and other places, so we send them there.

Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time some teenage girl came in having sprained her ankle real bad, or with some kind of fungal nail condition from just not treating her nails properly, I’d be able to buy an apartment in Manhattan. Sports is tough on the feet: fact. Gives me a bit of faith every time someone comes in and says they’re about to start playing Aussie football or netball or whatever, and they want orthotics to make sure their feet are fine.

So that’s life here at the moment. Handing out all kinds of custom orthotics, and sending them onto a podiatry clinic somewhere when it’s too bad. Some friends from work want me to join a local Aussie football league, which I’m still not sure about. But I know I‘m getting myself some arch supports before I go anywhere near that sport.

-Kyle