Summer Started Today at 12:54pm
Some count summer starting with the solstice or the predictability of Test Match rain, but for me, the season begins with my first cream tea of the year. It has to be the proper thing though. A scone with just the right amount of crumbliness; strawberry jam rich in ripe fruit flavour, not just a sugary red spread and clotted cream, real clotted cream. Not some facsimile which has never seen a shallow pan. Oh, and it has to be washed down with a cup of tea just the right shade of kiln-baked orange clay.
By this reckoning, summer started today at 12:54pm. It happened while I sat in the brick-vaulted crypt of St John’s in Smith Square. No sunlight disturbed the depths of the finest English Baroque footstool in the land, but as the taste of the cream tea filled my mouth, my soul was dreaming blue skies and lying on green grass while skin was butterfly kissed by a warm breeze.
By this reckoning, summer started today at 12:54pm. It happened while I sat in the brick-vaulted crypt of St John’s in Smith Square. No sunlight disturbed the depths of the finest English Baroque footstool in the land, but as the taste of the cream tea filled my mouth, my soul was dreaming blue skies and lying on green grass while skin was butterfly kissed by a warm breeze.
Labels: Cream Teas, St John’s in Smith Square, Summer
posted by David at 6:53 PM
4 Comments:
Yummy. God I love cream teas - it has to be Cornish clotted cream though!
Puss
Absolutely. It has to be proper, shallow pan clotted cream, preferably Cornish and at a minimum Wessexian.
Sad to say, I never did take to clotted cream, but afternoon tea, just divine.
Urghh.. you can't GET clotted cream here!! I had some whipped cream the other night with peaches and a scone, and it was good, but... Not the same.
No tea, either.
There is a little cafe by the edge of a bubbling Exmoor brook, that serves the best cream teas on earth. Tea made with water from the peat moors. Cream from the cows down the road. Strawberries I'm sure from the hedge. At least, I didn't see the Sainsbury's label.. ;-)
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home