Hi Huma! Great to see you again, although I expect you’ve come over to see the geek. You haven’t? You’ve come to see me! Wow! To what do I owe this honour?

He told you what? He actually said that I’ve finally flipped my lid! No, no, Huma, I’m not yelling at you so don’t rush away, please. Come on in, and sit down in the kitchen while I brew up some refreshing tea for you. My way of saying thanks to you for introducing me to that delicious chamomile tea the other week.

Look at these. Gorgeous aren’t they? All nice and shiny and dark red. These are rosehips, Huma. The fruit of the rose and they contain far more vitamin C than oranges. Ancient people all over the world harvested rosehips and dried them for winter use to keep colds and flu at bay and, finally, modern people like us are taking notice of natural health foods like this. Wonderful isn’t it?

See, all I have to do is drop a dozen or so in to a small pan, put in a couple of mugs of water, bring it to boil and let it simmer for a few minutes until the water turns reddish brown. Next, I simply strain it into cups and there we go.

Oh yes! Almost forgot. I put the rosehips back into the pan as they can be boiled up again three or four times before they loose their strength. Here, have a cup. It tastes fantastic once you get used to it and you don’t even need to add sugar. The rosehips are from my very own rose bushes out in the garden. I don’t use any chemical sprays on them so they are quite safe. Wild roses are supposed to be better but garden roses are all I have and are almost as good.

What? The brother of mine is telling everyone that I’ve regressed to being a cave dweller just because I’m enjoying making rosehip tea? And, his other version is that he’s convinced that I am one of the wicked witches out of Macbeth?

Well Huma… you must understand that, even though he’s all of 15 years old, he is so incredibly small-minded that he is never ever going to qualify as an astronaut, not in a million years. If I were you, my friend, I’d forget all about him and find someone with some intelligence instead.

Look… here he comes, help me tie that black t-shirt, the one waiting for ironing, over my head and I’ll go stir the pan some more. ‘Hubble bubble toil and trouble’, see that Huma? He’s run away!