Day 139
I went to a wonderful tea-party yesterday. A proper tea-party, the way they should be, all full of life and dogs and kids and grannies, not like the subdued and stilted affairs one gets in 'nice' hotels on sunny afternoons. No, this one emphasised the word 'party' just as much as the word 'tea'.
My lovely friend Beth, who I was at art college with last year, is leaving to work with children in India this week, and this was her farewell do. The huge table was spread with linen and piled high with sandwiches and handmade cakes and biscuits. There were four different tea sets to choose from - was I in a mood for old roses on paper thin china, so translucent one felt dainty just looking at it, or the more robust, willow-pattern blue, with bold, Indian daisies on?
And did I prefer mum's oat cookies or Beth's chocolate and ginger mini bics? There was a statuesque carrot cake queening it over the table, a gluten-free choclate torte and a clementine cake for the lady with allergies to choose between, as well as Grannie's (we used to get rationed, you know) sponge cake. Guests kept arriving, bringing chocolate cornflake crunchies, brownies, flapjacks, and a heavenly tray of chocolate eclairs that weren't so big you felt an absolute pig if you had more than one, but were way more than bite-sized.
It was carbohydrate heaven.
The guests were family and friends, cousins, Aunts, Uncles, pretty neices and charmingly precocious nephews, old friends, new friends, grannies and great grannies, and one happily getting over-fed but still hopeful, beautiful dog. As a stranger to everyone but Beth, I was welcomed, fussed over, looked after, entertained, sugared practically to the point of diabetes, photographed, and included in a way that moves me even now. What an absolutely lovely family. And how lucky was I to get to go.
Can't wait until she comes home again and they throw a 'welcome back' party for her.
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