Over the past 11 years, Patti Gaal-Holmes has kept a record of her comings and goings, who she’s spent time with, and generally all the other stuff one might keep in a diary, except for the part about keeping a diary. Rather than filling a notebook with her notations, she’s been collecting teabags. She’s gotten 32,000 tea bags so far, and her collection is growing every day as she adds to them, making little notes on each bag before drying them out for preservation.
“I love drinking tea and I save the teabags because it’s a way of marking the days – it’s better than a diary,” the Ph.D. student from Portsmouth says. The 44-year-old mother of three added, “They do smell a bit but I find it quite comforting. Sometimes friends think it’s a bit weird or eccentric and my kids just say, ‘It’s mum and her tea’.”
She drinks anywhere from 6-10 cups of tea per day, and even has a special box she keeps with her to store tea she drinks away from home, should she pop over to the home of a friend who isn’t aware of her secret quirk. A collection of her tea-diary is on display at Portsmouth’s Eldon Gallery, though it’s only a small portion of the three large suitcases of teabags she’s collected over the years.
Tags: woman saves tea bags as diary, 32000 tea bags, Patti Gaal-Holmes, Portsmouth, Great Britain, woman collects old tea bags, using tea as a diary, Eldon Gallery, unusual diaries, unusual journals, unusual collections
