The Turn of the Screw (1898) is a famous horror novella. But did you know there's a novella called The Turn of the Brew (1985)? It was written by British author John "The Spookinator" Jones from Preston, Lancashire.
It was published only in England as a counterpoint to Kakuzō Okakura's The Book of Tea (1906), but also to spin out a cautionary horror tale about tea. One of the scariest books in history, the British government the book in 1986 and, sadly, it remains out of print.
The Haunting Tales of Shifting Spots of Tea
"Doreen and Deirdre were chatting shit about Debby over their tea. It was sunny out, but that type of British sunshine that's more cold than warm. Not to matter! They were in the greasy spoon cafe and proprietor Dave had poured the brews then had a violent coughing fit. Doreen and Deirdre sipped at the brews, chatted, dissed out Debby, and dunked some chocolate digestives.
Then it was as if something so terrifying happened it was beyond words. The brews... turned.
Doreen didn't dare not think it real. But Deirdre was a battle-hardened realist. Here home had been blown to smithereens during the Blitz. Her father had survived the Titanic. Her mother had successfully robbed a bank and fled to Brazil. Deirdre was hard as goddamn nails and wasn't going to let this brew do any funny business. She grabbed hold of it with a screech and roared 'BREWHAVE!' and the pun was so bad it worked. The brew didn't turn anymore.
But Doreen's brew turned some more. The greasy spoon cafe was silent but for the whimpers of Doreen and outraged roaring of Deirdre. Otherwise it was really very quiet, I assure you, but still very loud and that forced all the other patrons to leave while grumbling about the noise."
Paragraphs like that were just TOO BLOODY FRIGHTENING for British readers in 1986. The result? Total nationwide ban! All copies of the work were rounded up, ditched into a field just off the M1 near Watford, and detonated with 300lbs of Semtex.
Thus, memory of the work is fairly sketchy.
Those who read it last did so in 1986, which is quite some time ago. Professional Moron did track down one bloke who read it. That's the author!
Interview With Turn of the Brew's Author
Okay, due to a bizarre sense of investigative journalism we decided to hunt down the author. Then we instantly regretted it. But we were there... to stare at his slobbering mush. Might as well, eh?
Anyway, The Spookinator told us this in a somewhat... candid world-first interview:
"I wrote it in a frenzied haze—drunk and hungover. I was necking five pints of gin a day at that point, so by midday I was so delirious and borderline catatonic the words I was formulating seemed barely human to me. I'd stop bothering to go to the bathroom, too, preferring to just foul myself on the spot so I could keep on typing. My day was only broken up from writing by trips to the local off-license for more gin. After two weeks of that the bloke refused to serve me. Furious, I called him a 'pillock', stole a bag of strawberry bon bons, and stumbled out into street. I went to a different off-licence and switch to beer to try and cool the mania. It was like I was more cabbage than person, slamming the typewriter with such clumsy vigour every single word was a typo.
However, once my editor sharpened the work up with the first draft I realised I'd fashioned an excellent little horror novella! He removed what he called the 'excessive' use of profanity (many, many f bombs) and replaced them with words like 'crud' and 'poohead'.
What emerged was a Bono Fido classic. I was chuffed about it, but the problem is Thatcher through a hissy fit and decided to burn the novel to the ground. She was amazing, I continue to vote for her to this day. Let it be... oh yeah, I'm a big Beatles fan, btw. Now... PISS OFF!"
After suggesting that was a very bizarre way to wrap things up, with random nods to The Beatles, he came at us with a machete. As such, we called that interview a day.
But we were very confused by his statement, not least by all the drooling he was doing, but after we left his home we realised he was weird and left it at that.
Conclusions: Let It Brew
After meeting with the author, we felt violent and psychotic. Misanthropic to many extents. But we gave The Beatles a whirl. Never heard of them before, probably some random cult thing hippies like.
Let It Be popped up... the jealousy we felt over 1970s era beard! Why can't we achieve such perfection?! Why were beards better in the past?!
Anyway, we have very high intellects as we read The Telegraph and our key takeaways are:
- God
- Dammit this was a waste of time
- Brews turn
Tea turns. Whilst not necessarily the work of Satan, it probably is anyway. Our advice? Drink your brew before the devil ahs a chance to create disorder.
Also, just read something else. We didn't like this book at all.
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