Let's have a tea party -- and no politics!

 

 

 

Of late, reflecting perhaps my advancing years / glancing tears / dancing ears / enhancing fears (** delete as applicable**), I have become particular to partaking o' Afternoon Tea (the repast not the beverage), replete with thinly cut smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches, warmed scones with the necessary accoutrements of clotted cream and fruit preserve, delicate cakes and pastries and copious cups of freshly brewed tea, sweetened as required, suitably milked if need be. Russian caravan is indeed a tea to savour on such occasions, dark and smokey, though an oolong serves just as well as would a good assam. One establishment we patronised furnished a selection of teas to sample, with appropriately timed hour-glass timers for us to control the infusion process to obtain optimum flavour from each leaf type. Another "tea house" (in the fair city of Bath in an upstairs refreshment lounge over looking the famous Pump House), supplied digital devices that blipped and flashed to signal that the tea was a idea comsumption strength.

 

Then sometimes such refinement and ceremony is not befitting the occasion or the location, though quite what prompted this reacion escapes me (even if it was in Cornwall) ...

 

 

(please note the WOMAD Tea Shirt and something on the plate that looks suspiciously like a muffin...)