Reading The Tea Leaves

"You will go on a long journey", "You will meet a man in uniform who will become very important to you", "Life may seem hard at the moment but it will soon improve", "A letter will arrive with good news"

My gran would read the tea leaves and the person seeking their fortune would listen with fascination. It was 1946 and right after World War Two everyone needed a bit of good news. People would come quite a distance, as my Gran's reputation was well known. As a small child, I listened with eyes wide with interest.

Reading the tea leaves was a very serious business. Fresh tea was brewed and poured without using a tea strainer. Tea had to be drunk out of a china cup and saucer whilst indulging in small talk. It was all very civilised. When the tea had been drunk down to the tea leaves, the cup had to be swirled around, three times to the right and three times to the left and then upended on to the saucer. The cup was then turned around another three times.

After this ceremony, my Gran would look inside the cup. The pattern made by the leaves, held all the secrets of your life and future if read correctly. Gran would sit up very straight in her chair, always dressed in her 'best' visitors dress and give the customer real value. When I say customer, no money ever changed hands but each visitor would leave a small gift, perhaps a twist of tea, a bag of sugar, a homemade cake or biscuits sometimes a brown egg which I would have boiled the next day, a rare treat! People said that Gran's readings were very accurate.

My Mum had a reading done when I was four and very ill with double pneumonia and scarlet fever . I was not expected to survive. Gran told her that I would grow up, do very well at school, have a troubled life which would only improve when I reached 50 and I would marry at least four times. Amazingly it all came true.

She predicted that my Dad would come through the war unhurt and that Mum would get the house of her dreams. Dad did come back from the war and when he left the army, the council allocated us a council house. It was part of a new, private development, built in an orchard and came complete with mature apple trees. Mum always said the day she saw it, she wept because it was everything she had ever wanted.

Gran died at 60 and although Mum didn't inherit her expertise at tea leaf reading, she was in her own way a bit of a psychic. She saw many things that came true and when Dad died after 54 years of marriage, she swore he came and sat on her bed every night and they chatted about her day. She said he held her hand until she fell asleep and was gone by morning. Mum always said that he was just waiting for her time to be up and then he would take her back with him. Mum also saw her Father several times after he died and Gran also used to put in an appearance after her own death, just to give her advice in troubled times.

As far as I know, I am not psychic and I hate tea, always drink coffee, but - when my Mum died recently I was sitting beside the bed holding her hand, when a voice inside my head, told me to open the window. I did and I will swear to my dying day that something went out, I felt the breeze as it passed, so maybe just maybe..................

From: Mrs Jane Manning

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