VELMA, a Grade II listed Victorian boathouse by the Thames in Teddington is where I discovered the weird tea that Peter Rhodes-Dimmer and his partner, Linda, would serve from the first of my trips there in June 2002…

Sensing a greater calling, I’d sold my publishing business - started at 15 in my parents’ back bedroom - in April 2001 to a comics book publisher. It had grown from a ‘fanzine’ into a sci-fi/fantasy entertainment brand comprising a monthly magazine sold in WH Smith from 1995 and internationally from 1997, including in Barnes & Noble in the US.

By 1994 I was venturing into books, filmmaking and events, but still in my 20s was chomping at the bit to find something more meaningful and purposeful. By December 2000 events had conspired to force me to sell up and trust in the universe to lead me to my next challenge…

Peter was involved in projects he would explain were to assist an approaching age of peace, harmony & prosperity and had published a book on the topic, ‘The Layman’s Guide to The New Age’. Part of his work was to read the “soul paths” of folk like myself guided to the boathouse in search of their purpose/dharma.

A medium friend had mentioned Peter’s Soul Path dowsing programme, so I signed up and from my first visit he and Linda would serve glass after glass of their homemade kombucha tea - which they’d brewed and perfected in their boathouse kitchen since 1995 - as Peter dowsed through the programme’s many questions.

Apparently their pendulum would swing “off the chart” whenever they dowsed the tea, proclaiming it to be the New Age paradigm antidote to sugary colas and sodas, and its myriad beneficial microbes could “energise and raise the drinker’s vibration and contribute to the incoming vibrational shift”!

Sceptical at first - and convinced that the vibrations making Peter’s pendulum swing in response to each question were at least in part due to his subtly shaky wrist - over the next 6 months I began appreciating the discernible lift I’d feel drinking kombucha - along with the complexities of the taste - more and more each time.

TBC…