Afternoon Tea

"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea" - Henry James

His Nibs and I were invited out lately, to afternoon tea.  I was delighted.  I never get to go out to fancy things.  We’re not very fancy in this house.  Sunday afternoons are often spent with me lying around in my pyjamas insisting it’s unreasonable to be expected to get dressed every single day, and His Nibs bribes me with promises of lunches and cappuccinos if I’ll only get fecking ready and go out and walk the dogs with him.

If I’d been born in the Downton Abbey era, I would have been one of those long suffering kitchen maids who scrub potatoes and clean fireplaces every day (and God Almighty knows that would be a fate worse than death for me).  But once I was invited to this afternoon tea I decided to become Lady Mary for the afternoon.

His Nibs had obviously worn himself out  trying to wake me up every morning that week, because he woke me up a couple of hours later than I’d requested on the Sunday morning.

He probably thought I’d wake up and get up and be ready to go.  The poor soul.  He’s so innocent sometimes.  I sat up in the bed and demanded coffee, a tweezers, and a mirror.  Then I started dragging my own eyebrows out of my head, yelping and moaning as I went.

When I got into the shower I nearly forgot to come out.  Then I had to blow dry my hair.  His Nibs was downstairs losing his mind, yelping about how we were only going for a bit of lunch, there was no need to carry on like we were getting married again.  So I yelled back that he wasn’t to shout at me when I was putting on liquid eyeliner, in case he made me ruin it.  So then he did a bit of roaring about how there was no need for makeup and I roared back about how he could save us both some time if he’d kindly iron me something to wear, but not my grey top or my red one, and not my pale jeans and on and on we went until we finally got in the car and he calmed down.

I didn’t discuss the fact that we were going for afternoon tea, and not lunch, with His Nibs.  I’ve never had an afternoon tea with him.  This is because I know him very well.  And I know that he is a good and kind man, but very, very practical. He doesn’t have any time for any sort of nonsense.  He knows the value of a euro.  And he gets very angry very quickly if he is hungry.

I quite like an odd afternoon tea.  Although I know it’s a bit of an indulgence, and that there’s probably better value to be had, it’s nice to go out and pretend to be posh every now and then.  But I usually go with a friend.  I never, ever go with His Nibs.

There was a gang of us, around fifteen, attending.  We ordered afternoon tea for all of us and waited patiently.

Eventually the food arrived.  The waitresses put a silver stand down between His Nibs and I, with sandwiches, a scone each and tiny bite sized desserts.  On top of each stand were little bottles of homemade lemonade “with a blood orange foam”, which made His Nibs’ eyes roll back in his eyes as though he was having a fit.

And then we moved onto the explanations of the food.  As we all listened and made oohing and aahing sounds and nodded and smiled, His Nibs kept up a running commentary in my ear.

“Why can’t she just say it’s smoked salmon on brown bread?  What do I care where the salmon came from or who fecking smoked it? “

“Right, so the scones come with clotted cream, lemon curd or jam, but we can’t have butter?  What’s that all about?”

Finally he was allowed to eat it.  He declared the coffee lovely, the cheese nice, the chicken weird, and the ham lovely, even if he thought the accompanying homemade apricot chutney was overkill.

“For Jaysis sake” he told me “we’re still in Kilkenny, this is getting out of hand now.”

I thought everything was absolutely gorgeous.  But the real fun was still to come.

He finished his sandwiches, and eyed his scone.

“Aren’t you going to eat it?” I asked him.  His Nibs is fond of baked goods, and God knows there’s not a lot of baking done in this house.

“I might wait” he told me.  “And have it at the end.”

“The end of what?”

“The end of lunch”.

I looked at him, he looked at me.  The time had come.  I had now to admit to my beloved husband that he wouldn’t behaving a lunch, as such.  Not as he thinks of lunch.  There would be no potatoes, no roast beef, he’d had what he’d be getting.

“This is the end of lunch” I told him.  “That’s it.”

“What do you mean that’s it?"

“That’s it.  That’s afternoon tea.  We’re finished eating now.”

“Cop on.  Sure, I’m not full.  That couldn’t be it.  It was only a sandwich.”

“Love, all jokes aside, you must have had some idea that you were getting a sandwich and a scone, followed by a roast dinner with all the trimmings, did you?”

“No.  I thought when the sandwich arrived that things didn’t look great.  But I assumed there would be enough to eat.  Sure they couldn’t charge the price of two roast dinners for a sandwich could they?”

I tried talking him around.  Which wasn’t easy.  Because I was hissing at him from the side of my mouth, but smiling at the same time, so that it didn’t look like I was giving out stink to him in front of everybody.  I got nowhere, so I had to start promising him things if he’d only be good.

I promised him I’d make him a nice dinner that night.  I promised that he was allowed to refuse to go to one function in the next six months, without question or trouble from me.  Finally I told him that if he didn’t behave himself and not complain about the food and sound as if he’d never been out before, I’d burst into noisy tears and tell everybody that he was a bad husband who had my heart broken.

“All right, all right, calm down.  I’m not saying anything.  But we might have to go to the chipper on the way home.”

It was a great afternoon.  We drank endless coffee and spent a few hours with lovely people, and had a little catch up.  We didn’t leave until we were hopping off the walls with caffeine and were worn out from laughing.

When we got in the car His Nibs told me that he hadn’t had such a good afternoon for years.  He’d really enjoyed himself, he told me, seeing everyone.  But he stated for a fact that he thinks afternoon tea is probably the Emperor’s New Clothes of meals.

“I mean to say, you pay three times more than you usually would for a coffee and sandwich, just because it comes on a fancy stand.  And we all do it because it’s the thing to do these days.  Talk about notions.  I hope you’re still making the dinner tonight?”