A Certain Slant of Light

Somehow, most of my friends have in the last few years become tea aficionados. We have tea whenever we get together, which is splendid in itself, of course, but did not fulfill the secret yearning in my heart to live or at least entertain like a person in a lifestyle blog. Tea is lovely. Tea parties are better. But now that I've got a teapot, what I really are plans for tea parties with themes.

"A nursery rhyme tea!" quoth I. With four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, and Peter Piper's pickled peppers, and curds and whey...

I shared my inspiration with Micky. "You realize that the parts that aren't impossible are unappetizing?" she pointed out. "We could use Cornish game hens and pretend they were blackbirds, maybe..."

Delicious, probably. Authentic nursery rhyme food, no. I decided to think about this a bit more.

"A Christmas tea!" I cried.

This is much more promising! Think of all the sources to be mined: Christmas carols, A Christmas Carol, Christmas poems through the ages! Chestnuts roasting on the open fire (or in the oven, as you will), plum pudding, gingerbread. Sugar plums, dancing in visions or otherwise. A roast goose!

Well, maybe not a goose for a tea. But we'd have quite enough food without it, anyway.

AND THEN, asakiyume mentioned that today is C. S. Lewis's birthday, and we agreed that tea would be an appropriate celebration, accompanied by Turkish delight, of course.

And I have been inspired! Think of the literary possibilities for tea. An Alice in Wonderland tea, of course, with treacle wells and Mock Turtle soup! That's almost too easy, perhaps.

And a fairytale tea, with a gingerbread house and candied apples, luscious red with snow white flesh.

And a Jane Austen tea, though that might be difficult. There's so little description of food in her books. A Redwall, tea, though: that would be easy! There are pages and pages of splendid things to eat in all the Redwall books. And Harry Potter, and...oh man, I could do American Girl teas! How cool would that be! FELICITY TEA.

Now I just need to convince my friends to unleash their inner child!

I finally rediscovered my camera cord! Thus, photos from my summer:



Tea for three in the tangled garden, in the little white house hard by the abandoned elementary. The teacups stand indefinitely on their wicker table, waiting for the tea party. The fairies left them out; drink, and be welcome, if you dare.



My new grad school. The ground steams because dragons lie beneath.

I went to Betty's for lunch/tea today - Betty's is a famous teahouse/restaurant in the center of York, which has been there since 1937, which is not quite as impressive as Sally Lunn's in Bath which has been there since 1680...but Betty's has better food.

I had rarebit! Which was delicious! And jasmine tea! Which was...interesting. I prefer my tea with milk, I think. But it was a lovely golden color. And hot chocolate spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top! (I've been meaning to write a post about the Comparative Hot Chocolates of York. I should do that. Tomorrow.) And a pear and almond frangipane tart with ice cream and chocolate sauce!

The chocolate sauce was TO DIE FOR. Mind, the tart was completely excellent too, but I would walk over a pit of burning coals to get to the chocolate sauce.

Also, my lunch companion was a Shakespeare nut from my medieval history class, who didn't think it was at all strange when I got histrionic about Brutus from Julius Caesar (because he's got so much integrity and courage and he's so idealistic and Cassius takes such cruel advantage of his ideals and it's SO TRAGIC), and even lent me her copy of As You Like It. (I haven't read any of the comedies, except Midsummer Night's Dream, because my school for some reason thought high schoolers would obviously prefer the tragedies. Or something.) So I can add Shakespeare to my British Classics project!

I'm having way too much fun with that project. I think I should do an American classics project when I get back to the States. I've always meant to read more F. Scott Fitzgerald...and finally get through a Mark Twain book. I feel bad about it, but I've never been able to read Mark Twain. I don't know why, because everyone else thinks he's so funny, but I find him boring. :( Maybe I've grown into him by now, though?

Anyway, it was an excellent day.

First, a question: does anyone know if King's Cross, St. Pancras Station, or the subway stop associated therewith are open overnight? And if so, are they busy? (This is a research question. I may force the twelve-year-old protags of the World's Worst Novel to stay in the station overnight.)

In other news! Homestay was excellent, despite my predisposition to loathe it, based purely on the fact that all the brochures said that everyone loves it. Note to self: being an anti-lemming does not in fact make you an original; it merely means that you arrange your life in defiance of fashion, which is just as pointless as arranging in accordance with it.

It was quite interesting living with an English family. We really did have tea every three hours or so (and it might have been closer together if we hadn't occasionally vacated the house to go see the local castle. And the mayor. I have no idea why the mayor wanted to see a motley crew of international students, but meeting her was great fun. She had a red robe! Which was lined with muskrat fur, which they called musquatch fur, except not really because the fur was fake! And she wore a golden chain of office which was probably worth more than the contents of my room, not excluding my computer!)

The tea came with hobnobs, ginger biscuits, and a philosophical discussion about the differences between English biscuits and American cookies. (Biscuits are crispy. Cookies are chewy and usually bigger around.) Tea with breakfast, also, and a remarkable selection of jams for the toast at breakfast time. I've taken quite a fancy to marmalade.

I've also taken a liking to sharp cheddar and port, although the second is probably out of my price range. Food is expensive! I've always been on a meal plan before, which makes the amount of money the food costs much more theoretical, and thus I had not quite realized.

Probably the best word I learned was "doolally" (doololly? doololley?), meaning crazy. Also "crackers," which means crazy too. (I wonder why there are so many slang terms for crazy? Nuts, bonkers, a few crayons short of a box. I've heard that we come up with slang terms for things we value, but I think that's wrong - I think that we come up with slang terms for things we consider powerful and perhaps frightening. Money, sex, madness: all cultural bugaboos.)

Also I've been reading Jane Eyre! Which is marvelous! Whoever wrote the footnotes was a bit of a twit, though, on a note in one of the middle chapters he SPOILS THE ENDING, which to be fair I already knew because of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair [which I didn't think was terribly impressive, but perhaps it would have been more so if I'd been acquainted with Bronte; although Mr. Fforde did have the unfortunate tendency to make all his male characters fall in love with his heroine, so maybe not) , but STILL.