“Well, stop standing around gawking! We’ve got work to do!”

Grandad led them to the back of the shed where he had a barrel. He gestured to Marty and Gracie to look in. Gracie took one look before starting to retch. Marty then noticed the smell.

“Oh my God!” she cried. “What is that?”

“It’s the basis for the pumpkin tea, my dear,” said Grandad proudly.

The barrel was three quarters full of seaweed and slime and goodness knows what.

“Now it needs boiling up and a good stir.”

Marty and Gracie looked at each other.

“Are you serious?!”

“I am absolutely one-hundred-percent serious!”

Gracie and Marty set about finding sticks for the fire. Grandad had an old inner tube to start fires on, so they piled them onto that. Then they set about finding anything that could burn. Marty found the matches while Grandad rolled the barrel on its bottom edge carefully toward the fire and hoisted it up with great difficulty onto the pile, puffing heavily.

“Woo-hoo!” he said, exhaling and straightening up, his eyes sparkling. “Let’s brew some tea…”

Grandad lit the fire, and they watched as the smoke rose in black columns before thinning out as the flames caught hold. They listened as the kindling sparkled and crackled.

“It’s going to take forever!” said Marty. Grandad tapped the side of his nose before retreating to his shed to fetch his trusty bottle of gasoline and threw a glug onto the fire, making the flame jump up ten feet.

“Oh my God, Grandad!” shouted Marty, feeling his face flush with heat.

“I think I’ve lost my eyebrows!” shouted Gracie, laughing and covering her face with her hands.

Before long, the barrel was bubbling like a cauldron. Grandad watched, rubbing his hands together in glee.

“Ha ha!” he cried. “Come on, then!”

It was only then that Marty and Gracie saw that Grandad had lined up some things to put into the tea. There were piles of stinging nettles. Some banana skins and a bottle of yellow liquid that looked to Marty suspiciously like pee. In Grandad plopped them one by one, making weird-colored smoke poof up from the barrel. As a pièce de résistance, Grandad fished out a contraption from the shed. Gracie looked at Marty. Marty put his hand to his head …

“Oh no…”

Gracie looked worried.

“What is that thing?”

They watched as Grandad wrestled what looked like a giant dead spider over to the barrel.

“This, my dear, is the Tea Stirrer 300. The new and improved version!”