He was the fattest boy in his class, and none of the other boys would talk to him. Ever. In moments of honesty he would just admit that he was sometimes a bit greedy. At home it wasn’t much better. His father found him boring, his mother was often away – doing good work – and his nanny seemed to spend a lot of time with the cook. As a result, he had developed a habit of talking to inanimate objects. But lately he’d found them rather irritating because they’d started to talk back. Particularly annoying was his own teacup, which had his name written on it. Every time he tried to drink a bit of tea, this blue and white cup would ask him if he knew about the sufferings of tea workers in Assam. ‘No, I don’t…’ he’d start to say, but the teacup would shut him up with a long lecture about the workers having to use the tea-growing fields as a lavatory. He hadn’t managed to finish a cup of tea for a week. But he kept on eating. Eventually he told the cup he’d had enough. He took the tea straight from its jar, stuffed the leaves into his mouth and died of a disease caused by an Assamese tea worker’s dysentery.
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