It’s lovely living in a small friendly community, where in general people know one another and where we are happy to keep an eye on our elderly and vulnerable neighbours.
One of the nicest community schemes is our parish lunch club (I would say that, as I’m one of the organisers!) where we serve a home-cooked meal to around 30 local pensioners every Thursday lunch time during school terms. We don’t meet in the holidays as many of our helpers have childcare responsibilities once the schools are out – but we are very conscious that, for at least some of our members, the lunch club is one of their few social activities during the week. To try to compensate just a little, we hold our annual Tea Party in the middle of the summer holidays – and this year’s took place yesterday. Large quantities of sandwiches were prepared …
Brown and white bread – Hovis of course – and three sorts of fillings. The village bunting had been booked weeks in advance as it is very much in demand at this time of year. Other, less well-organised villages, who haven’t got together as we did to make their own, queue up to borrow it for their own fetes and parties.
And it’s so much fun trying to spot your own flags – at fetes you often hear “Look, there’s grandpa’s old pyjamas!” or “It’s a bit of your dress from when you were six!” But I digress…
The sandwiches quickly disappeared, to be replaced by home made scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream.
The helpers are great believers in quality control – it’s important to ensure that the scones are just right!!
All the cakes are homemade, and donated by the helpers. I made some lemon cup cakes, but they hadn’t been put out yet when I took this picture. Somebody was wondering how many calories were on the kitchen counter – I dread to think! But all too soon the afternoon was over and it was time to go home. It wasn’t quite the end though – I was given a lovely slice of chocolate cake to take home with me and I scoffed it last night without sharing any with Ben and Daisy – much to their displeasure! Delicious! Then this morning, some work on another project for the September Bustle & Sew Magazine …
A Nice Pear!
There are some of us who wish we could live in a community like that. 🙂
What a lovely day, and everyone looks so happy!!!!
Your community and parish lunch club are to be envied (as well as all that cake)!
X Linda
I have lived in America for many years and four years ago, moved to the area we live in now. I became acquainted with a group of ladies belonging to the DBE (daughters of the British Empire), and to cut a long story short we now host what we call our Daffodil Tea in the spring. The ladies of our chapter, make sandwiches, cakes, scones etc and lots and lots of tea. We host the ladies of the other chapters and a few outsiders where we scarf up the great food and share lots and lots of memories. They look forward to this every year and some of the other chapters host various other teas at other times of the year. Just a little taste of home.
Sounds like fun Margaret – and there’s nothing like a nice cream tea!! xx