Saturday, November 8, 2008

Taking Tea with the British

I dearly loved the British Faire, which I attended with Gr. Judy and Meggar. The vendors and booths set up by the Daughters of the British Empire give you a chance to hunt for goodies. We listened to the organ grinder music as we shopped around for treasures and bought:
1. Very yummy English Cotswold cheese with chives,
2. Box of PG Tips tea (my favorite),
3. Little box of tea with Big Ben picture for my own Ben,
4. A cottage looking teapot for a granddaughter,
5. Real silver spoon engraved with an "M",
6. real Hob-Nob cookies (which I can never find), which will be eaten within the week by my children,
7. Package of Caramel Hob-Nobs (new flavor!),
8. Nothing from the antique bookseller because we ran short on time,
9. Antique earrings that matched my shirt, and
10. 4 mince pies and 2 coconut macaroons for $2 total--leftovers from the tea party.

Then we took tea. We only paid $8 and got 8 items: scone with butter and jam, raspberry jam tart, sausage roll, egg salad sandwich, cheese sandwich, cucumber sandwich, shortbread, and a chocolate truffle. Plus a bottomless pot of tea served in a real teapot with real china cups and saucers of all different pretty designs. We asked the lady in front of us in line to join our table. She was from Wimbledon and was just finished working her shift as waitress. "What I need is a good cup of tea." It was great to listen to her accent and learn how she came to America to do blood chemistry research. We also were joined by a woman from South Africa and she had an even more pronounced British accent. She also had the British manner which made me smile: A frumpy sweater, demands for more hot tea, blundering into a new topic of conversation when the old one was not finished, etc. We requested the help of these two ladies with the British Faire quiz. It was a series of 25 quotes by famous Brits that you had to match up with their author/speaker. That's how we won a tea pot!!

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