Today I had afternoon tea at the Georgian Restaurant in Harrods. ‘Twas a grand affair with three lovely ladies from school. You pay £20 and then get to eat and drink as much as you can, and you best believe that I ate as much as I could - no need for dinner for this scone-filled monkey! You choose your favourite type of tea from about 7 different types - rose petal to jasmine to green to earl grey. Then you get a platter of sandwiches - cucumber, egg mayo, tomato and cream cheese, salmon (and I think cream cheese) and ham, of which we had none since everyone was Muslim, except me who is a Save the Babies type of gal. The you have raison scones with clotted cream, strawberry jam and also the most sublimely lovely thing I have had in a while - rose petal jelly. My god! I wanted to smother myself in it and then devour myself on the spot, but I didn’t because I cycled there (about 10 miles) and probably stank and would therefore would have tasted bad. Then there were cakes - a chocolate mousse-y thing (*drools*), a creme patisserie & fruit combo and some other thing that I was too full to try.

The only downside was that the service was rubbish and I felt like they shoved us in a corner. I suspect it was all my ink that they disliked, but it may well have been my STANK. Ha! (I doubt it was the Muslimah because of the owner.) Oh Harrods, I love you anyway, and I rubbed my sweaty body over numerous cuddly toys in your children’s department. Weeeeee! Oh yes, another traumatic moment was when a certain someone dunked her salmon (and cheese?) sandwich in her cup of earl grey. Dis-fucking-graceful. (*Makes vomity noises*.) I didn’t go on at her (well, maybe just a little bit…) because she is Belgian and perhaps they have repulsive habits over there, but dunking savoury sandwiches* into cups of earl grey is a NO FUCKING GO on this side of the Channel. She’s a vile, wretched wench who should be flogged and then made to bath in a vat of mayonnaise. (*A Nutella sandwich might possibly be okay to dunk; I’ve haven’t made up my mind about that.)

So afternoon tea, you grandest of all the grand kind of past-times, I enjoyed you so. Apparently the afternoon tea at The Savoy is much better (and, alas, much more expensive), so one day I want to try that too. I also want to go to the Tea Museum as well, since I plan to revel in all things posh and antiquated until I leave this shitey island once more.

After that I volunteered at the Feminist Library. Good lord that place is a mess: wallpaper is hanging off the walls, it is dirty, hot, and utterly impoverished, which, come to think of it, actually sums up the current state of feminism. Especially since I learnt that my old uni, which was (one of?) the first in the UK to offer Women’s Studies as a degree subject, has closed the Women’s Studies department. Boo! I coincidentally saw one of my old lecturer’s Lucy Bland on the tube the other day and had a brief chat. I wish I had known then to commiserate with her. She was such a great lecturer and gave me a love of history that I previously had not. Anyway, the library - weee! It’s been closed for ages, due to lack of funding, but they are trying to reopen and so that is why they need volunteers. Absolutely anything to do with books makes me happy (unless it is their destruction) and so just shelving and cataloguing was a fun task. I plan to help out regularly, at least once a week. Also, I wouldn’t mind working in a library but they don’t hire those without librarian degrees or experience, so I do have a slight ulterior motive.

And then, to finish off a lovely day, I went for an evening ride along the river front. Well, I say “finish off” but there was a verbal fight with a stupid driver in Dalston after that. And after that bit of after thating, I hugged my cats because they are so bloody cute…

(As a final bonus, ps-ing type thing, who knew al-Fayed had an on-going campaign around Dodi and Diana’s death? It’s actually making for interesting reading…)

July 25th, 2006 | Category: My Life Love, Omnium Gatherum, Shitey England | Subscribe to comments | Both comments and pings are currently closed