Wednesday 29 May 2013

Tea the Eleventh

Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind you. 
Now tell me hundreds of things.
Saki


Betty's, York - Wednesday 29th May, 2013


____________________

Tea Takers


Sarah Ryan
Sarah Clarke

____________________


One of my hopes had been that in having so many micro-celebrations of my birthday, in different places and at different times, it would be possible to meet with a wide variety of people from various areas of my life and to catch up with some who I hadn't seen for a long time. Given that the last time I saw Sarah was her eighteenth birthday party, and that she is a little over a year older than me,  it is evident that it has been some years since we met.  Since buying our house in York, four years ago, we have been threatening to meet up and now seemed absolutely the time.  So to Betty's, and how joyful it was - so lovely to catch up and rediscover a great friend - I am sure it will be a much shorter time before we meet again.


Then (1984) and now... Little has really changed, except that I have learnt how better to present myself in photographs (that and the fact that Betty's provided sadly little opportunity for playing pass-the-parcel).




____________________


The Legendary Betty's


It was only a matter of time before this Yorkshire girl was enticed into a Betty's for tea, and I'm pretty sure that other excursions to related establishments will follow.



The main York branch is one of six such places,  The original Betty’s was opened in the Harrogate in 1919, but its Swiss founder Frederick Belmont found the enterprise so successful that he very quickly was able to develop the chain.  Todays cafĂ© tea rooms, on the corner of St Helen's Square and Davygate became the flagship, its style glamourous and fashionable, inspired by the liner, the Queen Mary.  It is a lovely setting and worth the inevitable queue, even in the rain.  

The range of cakes, sandwiches and snacks available is vast and they are consistently very good quality.  The great sadness for me is that lack of the plain scone on the menu, and this is the most serious mark against the establishment's name.  However, choosing instead the citron torte, with mixed berries and raspberry sauce, I was not disappointed - you know where you are with a Betty's cake and that is a very good place indeed. Sarah went for a 'medici' which was caramelised hazelnuts on a bed of plain chocolate which looked so good that after I had finished my shopping later I went back to the shop and bought two to bring home (one as a nice gift for Paul, and the other so that he didn't feel bad eating it on his own - I am so thoughtful).





We sat downstairs in the wood-pannelled basement. During the Second World War this was known as Betty's Bar and was the popular haunt of American and Canadian airmen stationed nearby and 'Betty’s Mirror', still on display bears the signatures of many of them, signed with a diamond pen on the glass.


As well as an amazing line in patisserie, Belmont’s Swiss confectionary background also means that Betty’s does a fabulous line in chocolates, and the shop is extraordinarily tempting with its rows of aesthetically delightful treasures and the smell of cake and chocolate ensnaring all but the most hardened resister of temptation.  I felt any such attempt at resistance was futile and came home with the pleasing little Betty's paper bag which signals continued delight.



_____________________


Eleventh Tea - Eleventh Year






_____________________


Childhood Friendship


Sarah and I met when I was eight and she nine, when we moved to the village of Womersley, North Yorkshire, where my Dad was to be vicar for the next four years.  The Ronksley’s farm, the vicarage gardens and the lanes and fields around the village were our playground and the setting for what I now appreciate was an incredibly privileged childhood in terms of experience and opportunity.  We went to the local village school together (number on roll: c.25), and then in consecutive years on to senior school near Selby (the shift to a school of 1000 was something of an adjustment).  We climbed on mountains of hay bales, made secret societies, I seem to remember that we got particular joy out of ringing the speaking clock from the village phone box, put on interminable shows and plays (for which I apologise now to our long-suffering families); we sang in the church choir, were Brownies, Guides and enthusiastic members of the YOC together, we graduated from our own plays to Youth Theatre, shared ideas, excitements and ambitions and I have gone through my life the richer for a friendship like this.

By coincidence on our way North this half term, with heavy traffic on the A1, Paul suggested we took a detour through Womersley - a very brief but powerfully nostalgic stop to look at the church (couldn't get past the locked gates to the church yard) and vicarage (which didn't have the clashing white fascia board and windows in our day...).  





Tea today was a mixture of catching up on years of busy lives since then, stories of motherhood, teaching and families, but also reminiscing – it was truly lovely and I very much look forward to opportunities to do it again.

____________________




_____________________







Tuesday 28 May 2013

Tea the Tenth

You can never get a cup of tea large enough 
or a book long enough to suit me.
C. S. Lewis

The Tiled Hall, Leeds City Art Gallery - Tuesday 27th May 2013



___________________

Tea Takers


Sarah Ryan
Paul Ryan
Olivia Ryan
Jean Thacker

____________________



Time for tea in Leeds, my home town, or at least the place that I lived the longest while growing up, and also the birthplace of my father.  I had in mind this particular location from very early in my odyssey plan.  The Tiled Hall is a long room linking the Art Gallery and City Library.  Built between 1878 and 1884, the library building is a manifestation of typical Victorian municipal pride. It sits next to the Town Hall and deliberately echoes its neo-classical grandeur but with a deliberately distinct style, and you can still sense the great Yorkshire pride of the aldermen and eminent burghers who masterminded their construction.



In the picture above the library building is largely obscured by a tree, but the lowest arched windows are those of the Tiled Hall itself. This hall was the initial reading room for the city's Free Library, and is a brilliantly exuberant setting with grand marble columns, ornate Burmantofts tiles, barrel vaulted mosaic ceiling and original parquet flooring. Used as reading room and then sculpture gallery, the hall with its colourful tiles was covered up in the 1950s in order to allow the expansion of the Commercial and Technical library; the glories of the room were only rediscovered during renovation work in the 1990s and were eventually restored and became the adjoining Art Gallery's cafe.






The library is somewhere I visited frequently as a child and it has important memories and links for me which made it an excellent place for tea.

____________________


A Family Tea







____________________


Eric Thacker



29th September 1923 – 5th November 1997

Priest, poet, jazz critic, artist, story-teller, song writer, theologian, calligrapher, humourist, surrealist, cartoonist, wise counsel, scholar, classical musician, polymath, crossword solver, actor, early riser, letter-writer, book-lover, word-lover, clutter-creater, historian, traveller, Yorkshire-man, hymnologist, ornithologist, utterly devoted husband and father, and my Pa.



The City Library in Leeds was for him a lifelong favourite haunt and source of delight, refuge and sustenance.

It also was probably kept afloat through most of the 20th century on the back of his overdue book fines... 

I so wish he could have been at some of these teas with me, so to come here to the library is a special link to him.  Although I have a more than sneaking suspicion that he would have preferred a steak and kidney pie with a pint of Guinness to a scone any day.




___________________


The Tiled Hall is simply a cafeteria but does serve a fine variety of cake, and the man behind the counter endeared himself to me immediately by offering us the use of his display cake stand when I asked for a range of cakes on one large plate. The spectre of Pa was most definitely in the air - included among the offerings were cakes featuring Dandelion and Burdock and 'Caramac' - two things to which he was very partial and which I certainly haven't found among the ingredients anywhere else yet...



Baked goods were of a high standard and the Victoria Sandwich and Ginger cakes were particularly delicious. 

Paul enjoys a Fat Rascal:





___________________





___________________


Tenth Tea - Tenth Year






____________________








____________________




Saturday 18 May 2013

Tea the Ninth


Tea does our fancy aid,
Repress those vapours which the head invade 
And keeps that palace of the soul serene
Edmund Waller


Woods, The Pantiles, Royal Tunbridge Wells - Saturday, 18th May 2013


____________________

Tea Takers


Sarah Ryan
Olivia Ryan
Antonia Beary
Pia Cronin
Julie Pirlot de Corbion
Lynn Varley

___________________


Clearly it was time for another tea in the South East and so for this occasion we ventured to Mayfield's nearest town, Royal Tunbridge Wells. Olivia and I were joined by some Mayfield friends. They have had to endure much of my tea planning and wittering and so it seemed only fair that they should enjoy some of the comestible benefits.  I chose Woods for this tea, partly because of its location and also because we have enjoyed its beverage possibilities before but never fully probed the depth of its cakes.




________________________



Woods is situated in The Pantiles, one of the oldest parts of Tunbridge Wells, at the heart of the original spa.

The town now known as Royal Tunbridge Wells grew out of the need to serve visitors to the chalybeate spring, discovered in 1606 by an ailing aristocrat with time on his hands to explore the neighbouring countryside. Dudley North, 3rd Baron North, believed that the iron bearing water had extraordinary health giving properties (he went on to live till he was 80 so he might have been on to something). It was claimed by North’s doctor that the water in the wells could cure:

"the colic, the melancholy, and the vapours; it made the lean fat, the fat lean; it killed flat worms in the belly, loosened the clammy humours of the body, and dried the over-moist brain."

In time the Upper and Lower Walks were created and planted with a double row of trees, which, by the end of the century had the colonnaded appearance that is still in evidence today. In the Georgian period this area was the centre of fashionable Tunbridge Wells. Social segregation was the order of the day - gentry on the Upper Walks and everyone else on the Lower Walks. The site of today’s tea is very much 'Upper Walks', naturally.

Originally the Upper Walks were paved with pantiles (one-inch thick square tiles made from heavy wealden clay, so named because they were shaped in a wooden pan before firing), which gave the area its distinctive soubriquet.  Now they are largely replaced by stone flags and so causing a deal of confusion over how the name came to be.





Now some way from the modern business centre of TWells (the Ryan family preferred abbreviation – why say three syllables when one will do?),  The Pantiles is a ‘Heritage’ location, home to antique shops, cafes, and various shi-shi little boutiques as is typical. However, it avoids over-quaint by the addition into the mix of less stereotypical establishments such as a random, and frankly down-at-heel newsagent/bookseller, and a particularly fabulous and practical kitchen shop, Mottram’s, which I encourage anyone with cookery needs/desires to visit.





"They have made the wells very commodious by the many good building all about it and two or three miles around which are lodgings for the company that drink the waters. All the people buy their own provisions at the market, which is just by the wells and is furnished with great plenty of all sorts of fish and foul. The walk which is between high trees on the market side which are shops full of all sorts of toys, silver, china, milliners and all sorts of curious wooden ware besides which there are two large coffee houses for tea, chocolate etc and two rooms for the lottery and hazard board."
Celia Fiennes, 1697

Little changes over time it would seem, and given that today was the occasion of a great Food Festival in The Pantiles, much provision buying was in evidence, although sadly not a hazard board in sight.

____________________






Tea was a good spread, although the service was more than a little dilatory (they also seemed slightly surprised when we asked for plates to eat from, but were reasonably good natured about providing them when prompted). Plates of sandwiches that were, to quote Antonia, 'generous, but lacking in finesse', and attractive little metal cake stands with scones and cakes, meant it was pleasing to the eye, and certainly filling.  The scones were pleasant, warm and a nice texture, but the clotted cream and jam supplies were not as bountiful as they might have been, and the scones being of such a large diameter we had to eke them out - ekeing is never appropriate at an afternoon tea. On the bright side, the cakes were largely good, including a very nice light, four layered sponge, and a competent walnut offering. 


 Julie looks approvingly at a scone:







____________________


Ninth Tea - Ninth Year







____________________



A very pleasing Saturday afternoon diversion.  Note how the photographer, capturing the party for posterity has managed to include herself in the picture too. 

Let's hope our over-moistened brains are now suitably dried out for the final week of this half term.




____________________