Peter Crispin Author

The Disappearing Turtle When I was six years old, my neighbour gave me a turtle. I can’t remember which neighbour, but I’m very grateful, as he was the BEST pet, and I will give you a few reasons why. They have a life expectancy of 30+ years, so you likely won’t be going through many turtles in your lifetime. They are super low maintenance, as long as you feed them in a bucket, and leave them in the bucket long enough to do their business. Finally, they teach you the importance of good hygiene, because they can carry salmonella so you need to wash your hands thoroughly whenever you touch them.  When I was eight or nine, the turtle vanished! We had him out walking around, as we normally did when we were home- he maybe have been running around with my guinea pig, who he got along very well with… so how does a turtle just disappear? A week passes. I’m in the basement, about as dark and gloomy as I was feeling, when I heard a faint scratching, and found the turtle wedged between a base...

Secrets I don’t say this often, but the date was off to a great start. After a particularly depressing dry spell of about two years, here I was, sitting across from Summer, a girl WAY out of my league. Her jeans were tight in all my favorite places, as was her white tank top. Her skin was light brown, light milk chocolate. ‘I think we should share secrets,’ she said about five minutes in to our date. We were at Tipsy’s, the only bar in town with a dart board, and a bewildering collection of board games. ‘You go first,’ she said’ I took a sip from my first pint, and glanced at her nearly empty double. Sailor Jerry’s, Amaretto and Orange Juice. Try it and you’ll probably love it… until you don’t. ‘Ok,’ I said slowly. ‘I like… smoking weed?’ She smiled at her, her beautiful eyes like a kaleidoscope of brown, starting to show the light glaze that accompanies drinking a double in five generous sips. Her lips looked so soft and… shiny. ‘Wow,’ she said with either nervousness or well-faked s...

I love tea, and have loved tea as long as I can remember loving anything, except bacon. I want to emphasise that when I say tea, I’m talking about products of Camellia sinensis, so that includes black, green, oolong and white tea. If it’s not one of those things, it’s not tea, though I have no doubt it’s very tasty, and that the first ingredient is apples (don’t ask me why). Tea has a sliding scale with antioxidants at one end, and caffeine at the other end. After the tea is picked and exposed to air it begins to oxidise. As it oxidises the liquid gets darker, and the wonderful antioxidants that occur in the leaves turn in equally-wonderful caffeine. White tea is steamed as soon as it’s plucked, so it’s low in caffeine and very high in antioxidants and expensiveness. The steeped liquid is kind of a yellowy gold. Green tea has more caffeine and less antioxidants, but still has lots of antioxidants and it’s… green. Black tea has more caffeine, less antioxidants, etc.  Then there’s th...