A Handful of Broken Biscuits: tea table.

This is a depiction of my grandmother's tea table in the 1930 in rural Somerset. While Auntie Polly sat alongside, smoking, coughing and being frowned at, the table was set.


A big noisy family tea would follow. Good, plain simple fare. Enough. Beth usually had a fruit cake, or part of one, from her last baking. She scorned 'bought cake' and never allowed it in the house. Bought cake was for shiftless housewives with no pride. There was plenty of bread and butter and cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. She made copious amounts of jam in season and there was always a choice of two at any time -- blackberry and apple, rhubarb and ginger, raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, blackcurrant, wortleberry, damson and plum.

A tablecloth and cups of tea were set for the grown-ups at table and there was just room to squeeze in Eric, the eldest and Laura, the youngest. The other children all had a plate on their knees, sitting on stools, the wide window ledge or the wood box by the range. They had Tizer or home-made lemonade to drink. All the while, the grown-ups' conversation ran like a river over their heads, half understood if understood at all. A warm, companionable time.