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.