The little tea shop...

                                    Am I a sad case? 

                                                       several years ago I had the idea it would be lovely to have a little tea shop somewhere, sometime in the future, and although it was pointed out to me by mr man that it would never make any money, I still harbour the thought in the back of my mind. A very small little place set somewhere in the 40's and 50's, the kind of place Agatha Christie's Miss Marple would have visited. I even imagined it could have been named Miss Marple's tea shop. There would have been photographs of Margaret Rutherford on the walls (my favourite Miss Marple, though I'm sure she probably wasn't what Agatha Christie had in mind when she wrote the character). I could even have added  a few photos of my mother who, it's worrying to say, is the image of her, (after all, we end up looking like our mothers). In fact she looked so much like Margaret Rutherford that when my son was younger and we watched her films he was convinced it was his granny.

There would have been no mothers or nannies with screaming children and buggies cluttering up the aisles, a sign on the door would have barred them, there are plenty of coffee shops out there for them to sit in and annoy people.

Inside it would have been slightly nostalgic, with little tables covered in crisp white tablecloths, just big enough for one or two people. All the vintage teacups and saucers would have been different, and it would have served the most wonderful Victoria sponge cake. Although It couldn't have supported the trio of lovely ladies playing in the clip below, the music wouldn't have drowned out the clicking of knitting needles and conversation.

      

                                                     

                                                                  A clip from one of my favourite films - The Green Man

With this idea in my head I became rather addicted to buying  tablecloths and tea sets from ebay, particularly if they were decorated with violets, and never paying more than a couple of pounds at most. That's why there are several boxes marked fragile cluttering up the garage, here are some of  them...

 

You can almost see the sunlight through this one.

I love this set, it reminds me of Alfred Bestall's illustrations for his Rupert Bear books.

Over the years I sold off a few of the tea sets and turned some of the more damaged tablecloths into lavender bags like this...

How can anyone fail to make something pretty out of such beautiful hand embroidery? 

                                                                              

But there are still some nice things boxed up. I've considered opening a second etsy shop, just to sell the vintage bits and bobs hanging around that mr man keeps coming across and mumbling about... "what's this, what are you going to do with this?" as he holds up a big old toy Citroen van...

I don't know...

But as the frightening prospect of a move from my little village in the big smoke to Dorset seems to be definitely on the cards, perhaps all the lovely bloggers out there who go to some amazing looking fairs will let me join them. I've only been doing one a year, the Christmas one at my son's old school. Somebody took this terrible photo for the 'friends of the school' website, if you look closely you can just see mr man sitting on the left behind my table (playing on his phone by the look of it) while I've obviously gone off to the loo, in other words, having a nose round to see what there is.

But until I do part with my little hoard, I'd like to think there's still the possibility of Miss Marple's tea shop, with it's mismatched tea cups, embroidered tablecloths and Victoria sponge cake, if I did open it, would you come and visit me, would you join me for a cup of tea?

photo - baking joy

OK, by now

XXX