AFTERNOON TEA WITH STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM

British cuisine has considerable charm. You may not think so, having been exposed to their ghastly fried monstrosities – but those things are an over-indulgence in quick cheap luxury, much like American pizza and county fair corndogs.
They aren’t really cooking.


DEVONSHIRE CLOTTED CREAM

An afternoon tea is incomplete without a bowl of clotted cream and some good preserves for your scones.
Clotted cream is made by gently heating whole fresh milk that already has a layer forming at the top, for about an hour, then letting it stand to cool, and skimming off the thick cream. The fat content of the resultant product is extremely high, making it barely one step removed from butter.
Without a goodly sploodge of clotted cream on your scone, the thick preserves will just stain it, and won’t give that luscious oozy feel between your lips.
What’s the point of a nice hot scone if you don’t doll it up?
You might as well eat a blueberry muffin and pretend you’re living high.

Scones, clotted cream, strawberry preserves. These are the essentials of late afternoon happiness. Along with a big pot of strong black tea.
Shan’t argue the pronunciation ('skon'), the nature of the preserves (cane sugar and strawberries), or the tea (black, with milk and sugar added).
Green tea with milk and sugar is distinctly odd, and who cares whether you brought the kettle to the pot or the pot to the kettle?
What matters is the rich comforting totality.
Personally, I prefer crackled antique plates for the scones, and a thick-walled ramekin for the cream, which helps keep it cool and firm. Cloth napkins, and fine chinaware for the tea.
A few slices of Dundee Cake for those with more austere tastes.

And perhaps a box of Egyptian cigarettes or Turkish ovals somewhere in the room. That's just a thought, but it would be an appropriate luxury.


AT EARLY EVENING

My friend Arendt lived with his wife in Devon, close to the sea. One day after motoring around looking at ruined abbeys and stone cottages on the moors, we headed back home under a leaden sky, arriving just before the rain started, shortly after five.
Which is a bit late for tea, but his wife, who had stayed home to garden, had sensed our imminent arrival and awaited us with strong hot Ceylon, toasty scones, fresh strawberries from the garden cooked soft with sugar. And a big bowl of clotted cream.
The effect was sheer heaven.
No, we did not have dinner that evening.

[Arendt's wife had intelligent eyes, a clear forehead, and dark brown silken hair.
She herself was infinitely more attractive than the tea tray she carried into the room, but I could not say so, and Arendt already knew.]

Filled with tea, Arendt and I spent the long wet evening grabbing books from the shelves to read and quote. Here’s some Dickens, oh wait, Kipling! Can you believe the doggerel that Coleridge wrote? Heh, Ruskin! Ooooh, Wind in the Willows!
At one point I became entranced by the atlas in one corner, he sat at the table in the other corner reading Le Geste Du Roi.


Ço dit Escremiz de Valterne: "En Rencesvals irai l'orgoill desfaire, se trois Rollant, n'en porterat la teste, ne Oliver, ki les altres cadelet
(Thus spake Escremiz of Valterne "to Ronceval I go, reducing that haughteur!
Should I encounter Roland he will not depart thence with his head, nor Oliver, who hath the others led").


DURENDAL

The song speaks of great gallantry, and a battle arranged by the treason of Ganelon, who is an infamous Quisling.

Rollant ferit en une perre bise, plus en abat que jo ne vos sai dire. L'espee cruist, ne fruisset, ne ne brise, cuntre ciel amunt est resortie...
(Roland smites upon a marble stone, which fragments more than I can say. The blade cries out, neither shattering nor splintering, rebounding upwards to the sky.....).


This is the part where Olivier has died, and all of Roland's companions have perished. Mortally wounded, he tries to break the precious sword Durendal gifted him by king Charles, lest the Saracens take it..... but it was made long ago by Wēland the smith, and cannot be destroyed.

We would have sung out the verses, but Arendt's wife had fallen asleep on the couch. We did not wish to disturb her, so we softly whispered the climactic parts.
She did not awaken, but snuggled more deeply into the red blanket, with only her closed eyes and forehead visible, her dark hair flowing over the cushion she used as a pillow.

Did she dream of the great deeds at Roncevalles? Had the chevaliers who fell in that bleak high pass so long ago come alive in her slumber, and smiled again? I do not know. Her capacity for Mediaeval French and Occitanian was far far greater than ours. It was her subject, those were her volumes. So that must have been likely.
We carefully pronounced the words as correctly as possible, so as not to irk her as she dozed.

Later we went out to the terrace to have a final smoke.
After his cigar he went back inside to rejoin his wife, I wandered off to finish my pipe while overlooking the ocean. The perfume of salt-water and the whisps from the brier are strong memories, I can smell them still.
I think of dark red strawberry preserves, thick luscious cream, wet wet evenings, and Arendt and his sleeping kitten when my nose remembers.


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