It’s not often that I write about England. It’s not where I live, and yet it never feels like a holiday. It’s this damp, foggy, funny little island that I happen to come from. I even try to avoid telling people I’m English (although the pallid skin tone and the accent do have a habit of giving it away) because we seem only to be known for hooliganism and being bad at languages. And although the food is sometimes not half bad (they do a hearty breakfast and a decent curry) I visit more for the friends and family than I do for the food.
But last weekend inspired me to blog about it – possibly because, for once, I wasn’t in London. I was in Oxfordshire. It was a hen party for a friend I went to university with, and the bridesmaids did us proud on the restaurant front. After a Moulin Rouge dance class (because we can can can), we beat a feather boa-clad path to the Old Parsonage for afternoon tea. It’s all log fires, wooden beams and starched linens, not to mention the three-tier-high stack of sandwiches (crusts removed, of course), Victoria sponge, sticky date cake, biscuits and still-warm scones with clotted cream and jam. How marvellously English. I drank Earl Grey and ate myself silly.
