I don’t eat lunch, I’ve pigged on testing cake mixture and fresh baked scones, and the crusts cut off the sandwiches.  I’ve bought homemade jam and farm cream and special cheese and I can hardly wait to see your face.

You make me feel like dancing, dancing…

I lay my tiny table with the table cloth from the bring and buy at the school, and put out my ‘best’ china, bought from Jim- the- plates half way down market street, He sells beautiful stuff, which doesn’t match but all comes from posh-once-upon-a-time sets, and isn’t chipped.  I put out sugar cubes in a bowl the colour of strawberry blancmange, and balance the worn silver-plate tongs on top, and put the jam into dishes with lids.

Sugar
Oh honey, honey
You are my candy girl

I look at the table: there is no room for the plates of food… What I really need is one of those desert trolleys, or a cake stand with tiers.  And doilies!  I have one doily, but I don’t want to take the carefully arranged jam tarts off the plate to put a doily under it now, and I’m not sure it will pass muster, I don’t think it’s clean.  I put out napkins, but not in the rings that I keep on the mantle shelf, napkin rings suggest I expect you to come back, to use the napkin again.  No, you need to understand this for the ironic gesture at tea-with-the-vicar that it is.  You could almost call it an installation, if this was Stoke Newington instead of the wrong end of Broad Oak.