Aftermath Of The Night Before

5

Aftermath Of The Night Before

March 1 Not. “Thought you were going to ride work with us this morning, John?” said Mr O. on a breezy note, coming into the kitchen all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and somewhat equine-odorous, to find Colonel Raice just about to sit down shakily at the table.

    The addressee smiled palely and managed to utter: “Very funny, Ian.” He looked at our somewhat unresponsive physiogs. and croaked: “Would there be any real coffee?”

    “No!” we all chorused evilly, even Bean Minor, who’d been rather surprised by certain aspects of last night’s Lucullan repast, beanfeast, wing-ding, hooley, blow-out, or orgy, and had asked in bewilderment as we hauled him up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire: “I say, Colonel Raice doesn’t actually like that ghastly lady, does he?”

    “Brown dust,” said Mr O. succinctly, not to say drily.

    Flossie got up. “I’ll make”—he paused fractionally, just enough to attract our attention, not that he hadn’t already—“some more toast and fry up some more of that left-over ham. Any of that Branston Pickle left, Bean?”

    For once getting the point, my sibling replied: “Yes, loads. It goes jolly well with fried ham, doesn’t it? I say, you will use plenty of butter when you fry it, won’t you?”

    “Naturally,” replied Flossie superbly, as Colonel Raice was heard to gulp and seen to sink his head in his hands.

    Mr O. sat down and inspected the huge family tea-pot which usually graced the Ovenden table on such occasions. Or at most times, really. “Stewed,” he ascertained. “Never mind.” He filled his cup. “Pass me the milk, would you, Tommy, there’s a good lad.”

    “I think it’s Gold Top, Dad,” warned Egg laconically.

    Mr O. peered. “Where is its top?”

    “No idea, I’m afraid.”

    “Gold Top is five percent butterfat, y’know,” I said very helpfully.

    “Good, my metabolism could do with a hefty belt of cholesterol after a nice canter over the downs!” replied Mr O. breezily—he isn’t slow, I’ll give him that.

    Bean Minor duly passed it to him, looking slightly puzzled, the import of the conversation having gone over his little head, but then piped: “Yes, I think Sister Bean’s right, Mr Ovenden: one can quite clearly taste the fat, y’know.”

    Crumpet at this point choked violently into his second cup of lukewarm tea, gasping: “Crumb in throat!”

    “Can one, Tommy?” replied Mr O. on a weak note. “I see. Jolly good.” He poured a generous dollop of Gold Top into his tea.

    Colonel Raice got up and tottered blindly over to the sink-bench.

    “I think the brown dust is in the pantry. Other side of the room,” said Flossie helpfully from the stove, whence now arose the delicious smell of frying slices of thick, juicy ham.

    Silently the Colonel tottered over to the other side of the room.

    Possibly we didn’t actually need second or in some cases third helpings of fried ham, toast and Branston Pickle, but we all ate hungrily nonetheless and Egg excelled himself by producing: “Pity Mr Lamont didn’t bring down a dozen eggs and some nice fresh mushies, they’d have gone well with this. I always fancy a fried egg with—”

    “Shut UP, you blasted boy!” cried the Colonel. Quite possibly he’d discovered just how vile tired brown dust that Horrible Hearty Henry always leaves the lid off can taste.

    “Oh, frightfully sorry. Not feeling quite the thing, sir?” he returned airily. “Bad head, is it?”

    “Ooh, I say, have you got a hangover?” gasped Bean Minor in great excitement. “A real one?”

    Mr Ovenden choked.

    “Crumb, was it, sir?” said the brilliant Crumpet sympathetically. “Have another sip of tea with Gold Top.”

    “Look,” said Colonel Raice forcefully, “I have got a hangover, yes! And as you pack of idiots may not have remarked last night, getting blind drunk is the only possible way to escape the clutches of frightful hags like bloody Ma Berrington!”

    A certain silence reigned. Then Flossie drawled. “So glad we’ve got that straight, sir. One or two of us had quite the wrong impression, hard tho it may seem to believe.”

    “Er—yes,” said Mr O. He cleared his throat. “Think you lot missed the hard drinking. She got worse after you went out, as a matter of fact, and John, uh, took to brandy. Then she switched her attentions to Clive, but I’ll say this for him, he was more than a match for her. Tho he didn’t spare the Cognac either.”

    “He prefers bimbos, sir,” the Crumpet explained.

    “Uh—doesn’t she qualify?” he groped.

    “Superannuated bimbo class, sir, definitely,” he explained. “Not Dad’s type.”

    “Yuh—er, yes, I see, Lucius,” he said weakly. “No, well, that describes her to a Tee, actually,” he added, rallying. “So, er, I think you lot can lay off John, now, he’s suffered enough.”

    Flossie sniffed very slightly. “Depends upon one’s standards, perhaps, sir, but if you say so. –You had enough to eat, Sister Bean? There’s a minute portion of that fruit stuff with cream and liqueur left, if you fancy it.”

    Unfortunately I couldn’t have crammed it in. “Um, no, thanks, Flossie, I’m really full,” I said feebly.

    “Ooh, can I have it?” asked the innocent Bean Minor eagerly.

    Flossie stood up and looked down at him tolerantly. “Well, you’ve a fair way to go in order to attain the stature of the major bean, here, so I suppose there’s no harm in its going to the hollow legs. Oh—it’s ‘may I?’ rather than ‘can I?’ if one’s usin’ R.P., y’know,” he added, going over to the fridge.

    “Using what, Sister Bean?” the innocent one hissed.

    “R.P.: Received Pronunciation! One would say ‘may I’ in Standard English!” I hissed, tho why I was hissing, I don’t know.

    “Oh, right. May I please, Flossie?” he piped.

    At this juncture some persons might have appeared slightly taken aback or laughed weakly, but Flossie Nightingale of course rises above such matters. “Certainly you may, minissimus scion of the genus Phaseolus. –Here,” he said, presenting him with the large dish in which reposed a very small helping of delicious pud, and just in passing the Crumpet’s teaspoon.

    “Thanks awfully!” he beamed, starting in on it.

    The Colonel got up and tottered out.

    Dead silence, except for the noises of a small person eating.

    Finally Egg cleared his throat and said on a weak note: “Gosh, I think that really finished him off. Did you mean it to, revered Hon. Sec., Junior Drones?”

    “Ah… Not entirely,” Flossie murmured. “Half and half, really. Unlike this Gold T—”

    “Shut—bloody—up, Jimmy!” gasped Mr Ovenden, going off in a roar of laughter.

    Grinning, Flossie shut up.

    And that sort of set the seal on a thoroughly deserved morning, really.

    Mr Lamont surfaced around about lunchtime, just when certain people were wishing—not that they hadn’t eaten that yummy ham, that would have been potty, but that there had been considerably more left over. Or that some those of leftovers from the previous night had been veal and ham clad in pastry, but alas, the last of that delicious viand had long, long since disappeared down the Bean’s undeserving gullet.

    “There you are, Sister Bean, darling!” he beamed, encircling my shoulders with a beefy arm. “Not in the gear this morning?”

    “No, it’s not really a Junior Drones morning.”

    “Than I see I’m correctly dressed!” he said with a fruity chuckle, squeezing me.

    Er… Gents’ country wear it was not. Large navy blazer featuring brass buttons, yachting for the use of, large navy cotton trousers, and a pale blue knit shirt with a small reptilian logo situated approx. over the gentlemanly nipple. Plus the white bowling shoes, and a red and white silk scarf negligently tucked in at the neck. Mr Ovenden’s training stables being situated a fair way from the sea—horses aren’t really sailors, they prefer downland and lots of grass to sea and sand—the question did rather arise, Why?

    “Um, well, yes,” I managed limply. “Unless you want to ride.”

    “Definitely not, dear, my equestrian days are long since over. These days I may buy the occasional leg of ’em, y’know, or have a little flutter, kind of thing;”—kind of thing! Crumpet said he bet ten thousand on the Derby this year!—“but I leave the slinging the leg over bit to Lucius. –Crumpet, I should say!” he amended with his fruity chuckle, shaking all over—a strange sensation, as he still had his arm round me.

    “Um, yes, he’s rather good, Mr Ovenden says.”

    He sighed. “Well, yes, dear, but it’s hardly a career, is it, at his height and weight?”

    “I was thinking maybe he might like to train?”

    He winced. “That’s a business, Mel, darling. Ian Ovenden spends hours doing his accounts and calculating which nags are up for what and so forth, and checking out the best bargains in hay and horse nuts and stuff, y’know. My Crumpet can add, but he’s got no head for business, that’s an entirely different thing.”

    “I see. He said his maths teacher said he might do quite well at Oxford if he went on with it—is it ‘it’ or ‘them’? I never know. Maths, I mean.”

    “Not a career either, darling, unless he wants to teach, which God forbid.”

    “He gets on well with the younger boys at School but I can’t see him managing to keep a class in order,” I had to admit.

    “No, nor being organized enough to prepare lessons. Has he mentioned anything to you that he’d like to do?” he asked without hope.

March 7 Not. Carrying straight on: Er… The trouble was, it wasn’t the sort of thing that rich City gents hope their sons will go into. “Um, well, he likes people… He did say once that he thought that being a receptionist in a big hotel would be fun. Um, I think that was after that time you both stayed at the George V in Paris,” I ended feebly.

    “A hotel receptionist?” the poor man echoed, very shaken.

    “Um, yes, because you see new people all the time, you see… Sorry.”

    He sighed heavily. “Don’t apologise, Mel darling. Well, I suppose he can go on to university after this next year at School… If he passes everything. Give him a few years to look around and grow up a bit and then maybe he’ll find something a bit more… solid,” he ended glumly.

    “Yes. Um, say he married a really, really sensible woman that was awfully good at business and very horsey: then they could run a training stables together and he could deal with the owners,” I offered.

    “That would work, but find a really sensible woman that’d be willing to take on Lucius!”

    Right. There, as the jolly old Spokeshave would say, is the rub.

    “I suppose if the worse comes to the worst he can have the house and a few horses,” he sighed.

    “Mm. I think he’d be quite content with that, really, Mr Lamont.”

    He squeezed me gently. “I suppose you wouldn’t care to take him on, would you, darling?”

    “Not really!” I said in a squeak. “Sorry!”

    “No,” he agreed heavily. “Oh, well. There’s plenty of time yet… Meanwhile, what about this afternoon, eh? I was thinking of a lovely tea, perhaps at the De La Warr Pavilion?” He looked at me hopefully.

    “Buh-Bexhill-on-Sea?” I croaked. “Mr Lamont, it’s miles away! And it’s Sunday: the roads’ll be chocker and even if we get there in time for tea the place’ll be choked with day-trippers!”

    “Oh,” he said, very dashed, poor chap. “I suppose it will, yes. But the Rolls will do it in no time, y’know!”

    “Last year we tried to go twenty-five miles on a fine Sunday to a place Mrs Ovenden likes on the far side of the town, and it took us two hours, it was bumper-to-bumper.”

    “Damn. Well tell you what, what about next Wednesday?” he said brightly. “I’ll pop down, collect you all, and off we pop!”

    “Well that would be lovely, if it’s a nice day, but I don’t think we’ll all fit in the Rolls, Mr Lamont.”

    “Four can fit into the back seat easily, my dear, and there are the two jump seats as well, and you and me in the front, eh?”

    Phew! I wouldn’t have to sit on somebody’s knee, especially not Crumpy’s? “That sounds great!”

    “Splendid! It’s a date! And we could all wear the gear!” he said eagerly.

    The people who run the De La Warr Pavilion’s café (I was under no misapprehension that Mr L. would want to see whatever unlikely arty show they had on at the moment) might be a trifle startled at the sight, but on the other hand—

    “Gosh, it’s exactly our era!” I gasped.

    “Abso-bally-lutely!” he beamed.

    Oops, I sort of had a feeling that that one had entered the C. Lamont idiolect and would be there forever more, so to speak. Oh, well!

    Oddly enough everyone agreed that next Wednesday at Bexhill-on-Sea would be top-hole, the cat’s whiskers, and rather jolly.

    Which kind of left the problem of the rest of today, especially as, as one or two persons pointed out, we’d eaten it all, there was nothing for lunch except Marmite or marmalade sandwiches. Or as alternative to Marmite, Bovril for those that fancied it.

    By this time Mrs O. had appeared, looking vague. “Oh, hullo, Clive,” she said vaguely, investigating cupboards. “Where’s all the food gone?” she asked vaguely.

    “What there was of it, you mean, Mater,” said the Egg on an austere note. “Someone forgot to shop, not to say that she’d asked people to dinner last night.”

    “Oh, had I? Sorry, Clive.”

    “Not at all, my dear. You didn’t actually ask me, but you did ask John Raice and the Berringtons.”

    “Mr Lamont came galloping to our rescue, ’smatter of fact, Mater, on his jolly old charger, laden with succulent viands,” Egg explained.

    “I do wish you would try not to talk in riddles, Alan, dear,” she said vaguely. “Where did the orange juice go?”

    “What orange juice?” he replied blankly.

    Mr Lamont coughed suddenly.

    “You coughed, sir?” Egg enquired blandly.

    “No, old man, he merely cleared his throat,” Flossie explained in soothing tones. “We don’t think there ever was any orange juice, Aunt Margot,” he added politely, “at least, not since we got here. We were about to examine the vexed question of lunch, I believe.”

    “Jimmy dear, you’re as bad as Alan. Well, you could all pop down to the village—take the Heap, Alan.”

    Egg sighed. “The Patels don’t open on Sunday afternoons.”

    “There’s Mr Perry’s!” offered Bean, his eyes lighting up.

    “Two chocolate scoops don’t constitute lunch in my book, old chum,” he sighed.

    “Nor in mine!” said Mr Lamont hurriedly. “Come on, Junior Drones, we’ll pile into the car and find a teashop or similar!”

    “There is a place over near Lower Bumbleton—at least, on the outskirts—that does cream teas,” said Egg dubiously. “I don’t know about lunches, tho.”

    Flossie looked at his watch. “By the time we get there it’ll be practically teatime anyway. That is, if certain persons intend to change,”—he looked hard at the Bean—“into garments more fitted to the scans of the G.B.P.”

    “Great British Public, Bean Minor,” I explained kindly.

    “Yes; I know that one.”

    “Jolly good, oh knowledgeable infant,” said Egg, eyeing him drily. “Just add to your goodness by popping upstairs and eliminating those smears from the old physiog., would you?”

    “Wash your face, Tommy dear,” Mrs Ovenden translated unexpectedly.

    Rather pink, the Junior Bean vanished.

    “Would you like to come, Margot?” asked Mr Lamont kindly.

    Egg’s respected mater might have been seen to blench. “No thanks, Clive. It’s very good of you… Are you sure you want to?”

    “Quite sure!” he said with his fruity laugh.

    And that seemed to be that, and with the usual unavoidable delays in re changing shoes, Bean not wearing that Thing if he wished to save Flossie’s sanity—he didn’t, but Mr Lamont weighed in on Flossie’s side—and having to dash to the loo, we headed for the Roller on the first stage of our journey in quest of rumoured cream teas.

    We were just about to pile into the Lamontly vehicle when the Colonel tottered up to us.

    “Hullo,” he said on a weak note. “Where are you lot off to, then?”

    “Place that does cream teas,” replied Egg somewhat tersely, eying him drily.

    Colonel Raice was seen to wince.

    “Like to come with us, old man?” said Mr Lamont cheerily and without, as far as one could ascertain, any undertones at all. “Take one of the Junior Drones in the MG: big treat!”

    “Not if it breaks down, tho, sir,” noted the brilliant Bean.

    “Er—actually, I think I’ll head back to my cottage,” the Colonel muttered.

    “That’s it, it, sir! Top down, of course,” said Egg kindly.

    “Abso-bally-lutely!” Flossie agreed. “Get some fresh air round the old brainpan, what?”

    The Colonel produced a feeble smile. “Mm. Well—so long.”

    He got into the MG. Funnily enough no-one expressed a hope that he’d soon feel better or told him to drive carefully.

    And off he went.

    “I think he’s still got a hangover,” noted Bean Minor percipiently as we piled into the Rolls.

    “Good!” Egg, Flossie, Bean and the Crumpet replied in chorus.

    “Sister Bean?” enquired Flossie. “—Jump seat, thanks, miniscule Bean.—Are you going to make it unanimous?”

    “Just drop it, lads,” said Mr Lamont in his usual cheery tones. “No-one likes to discover that their idol’s got feet of clay, okay?”

    I opened my mouth and shut it again. It’s not easy to utter sense when your cheeks are that hot, actually.

    He started the Rolls, and patted my leg. “We’re all only human, Mel darling,” he said mildly as the car purred down the drive, “but it takes a fair bit of living before we realise it and can make allowances for other people.”

    “Even old ones,” put in the blasted Bean unnecessarily.

    “Uh—well, John’s not that old,” he said weakly. “Don’t think he’s hit forty yet.”

    “But he’s a colonel, isn’t he?” the blasted boy persisted.

    “Lieutenant-colonel, old Bean, hadn’t that dawned? No, well, one doesn’t use it when addressing him, of course,” he said, those early years at Eton more than in evidence, never mind a year of Marbledown’s fell influence. “Thought you knew that, Crumpet, old lad?”

    “I don’t think so, Dad,” he replied hoarsely. “I’d’ve said he was over forty.”

    “One makes lieutenant-colonel at thirty-seven, I think. How long’s he had the rank?”

    Silence from the back seat. Finally the Crumpet ventured: “Um, he was a major before, that’s right.”

    “Well there you are. But Colonel or not, we should all make allowances for him. And at least,” he added with supreme untact, “he didn’t do the bally woman, did he?”

    More silence. Personally I felt as if my cheeks couldn’t possibly get any redder. I just sat there wishing I was utterly elsewhere.

    Mr Lamont patted my leg again. “You just think about cream teas, Mel darling.”

March 17 Not. Cream teas or something, yes. Would there come a time, I wondered bleakly, when one was not given to horrendous blushes? …Possibly not until menopause age, when, as described feelingly by one of Dad’s sisters, Aunt Beth (not all bad, especially for an aunt), they strike again, in fullest force. Bother.

    “What is it?” asked Flossie faintly as we drew up at the intended destination.

    Egg grinned. “The Cosy Cottage Café, old man, what else?”

    He goggled at it.

    The Cosy Cottage Café was very Ye Olde indeed. It was situated down a very Ye Olde country lane, which had caused poor Mr Lamont to wince as the Roller encountered horrible bumps as to its lower portions and was brushed by wildly overgrown untrimmed hedgerows as to the faultless paintwork of its upper portions. Help.

    We clambered out and stood there goggling.

    It was a cottage, all right. Ye Olde touches everywhere—bottle-glass windows, all that. Possible thatch but the front so overgrown with floral stuff that it was hard to be sure. Climbing roses and what would be a flowering wisteria in spring, and a garden path lined with more floral offerings… To one side a glimpse of pergola-ed terrace with chairs and tables did promise teas, yes, but the front door was closed and there was nothing parked except us in the very inadequate parking space before the dump.

    Mr Lamont looked up and down the narrow lane in horror. “Where do the customers usually park?”

    “Along the lane if they drive here,” Egg replied cheerfully, “but most of them are locals: it’s very popular with the retirees from the village: a lot of them walk.”

    Oh sure. The average retired inhabitant of the sort of poisonously putrid Ye Olde renovated country cottage that pollutes Lower Bumbleton never uses the gas-guzzler to go five hundred yards, of course.

    Mr Lamont shared them sentiments: he gave the Egg a very dry look. “Well if they don’t, me boy, we may be here until they close. I’m not the risking the Rolls, thanks.”

    “Maybe they’ll have lots of leftovers they’ll want to get rid of!” piped the always-optimistic Bean Minor.

    Grinning, Mr Lamont acknowledged: “Maybe they will, at that, littlest Bean! Come on, you want to lead the way?”

    Proudly Bean Minor marched up the garden path and operated on the closed front door with his clenched fist.

    “I say, Egg,” ventured Crumpy cautiously, “there’s a notice on that door, isn’t there? What does it say?”

    “Pls Ring if an Rnswr is Rqd—approximately,” he drawled.

    “Signed WOL, no doubt,” said Flossie in a bored tone.

    “No, dear old chum,” sighed Egg: “signed Flora ampersand Daphne.”

    “I see, it’s run by a cosy pair of girly friendy-wendies, is it?”

    “Got it in fourteen,” Egg agreed.

    Unfortunately this didn’t deter Flossie and he pursued: “One angular, booted, shirted and trousered, and one plump, cosy, and florally be-smocked with a pastel woolie or two about her?”

    “Almost, Nightingale, go to the top of the class,” replied Egg, sounding very, very bored as the front door opened suddenly and a tallish woman with a lot of fluffy fawnish-greyish hair topping a definite floral smock of the rather voluminous variety appeared.

    “Hullo, dear!” she cooed as Bean Minor took a startled step backwards. “You’re rather early for tea, I’m afraid, we’re not really open yet, but I dare say we can manage! Goodness, are all these people with you?” she added, apparently noticing us half a dozen yards away for the first time. “Yoo-hoo! Do come in, everybody! The kettle’s not quite on the boil and the scohnes aren’t quite out of the oven, but never to mind! We’ll cope!”

    “I’ll grant you this, Egg,” said Flossie, grinning: “that is a collector’s item. I don’t dare to guess, so just put me out of my misery: Flora or Daphne?”

    “Does it matter?” Egg returned drily.

    “Not really!” he choked, suddenly bashing him on the back. “Lead on!”

    “And damned be he who first cries ‘Hold, enough!’” Crumpet added brilliantly.

    His dad gave a roar of laughter, grabbed him with one meaty arm and me with the other, and propelled us in slightly crabwise fashion up to The Cosy Cottage Café.

    … That one was Flora, as it turned out. Daphne had been making the “scohnes”, She eventually appeared with a tray, very flushed. She was a bit shorter than Flora but otherwise there was nothing to choose between them: equally fluffy and florally be-smocked.

    “Oh, dear! You were rather early, I’m afraid! Are you quite comfortable under the pergola? It does tend to drop things rather, only not so much now the wisteria’s over, of course! Well not over,”—loud titter—“silly me, but its flowers are, if you see what I mean. I do hope those cold drinks Flora brought you were all right: we don’t usually, you see, but sometimes people bring the grandchildren, so we— But you are rather early!”

    “But those people in there are eating,” said Bean Minor solemnly, nodding in the direction of the restaurant proper, through which we’d come to get to the pergola-ed terrace at the side of the house. True, we could just have walked round outside. However, being ushered in was apparently the correct Cosy Cottage Café etiquette.

    “Well yes, dear, those are the gee-gees!” she confided with a girlish giggle.

    We all looked blank: the bodies in Q. were two elderly couples, sitting at separate tables. Neither couple looked in the least horsey.

   “‘Oops! That’s just what we call them!” Another giggle. “The Greens and the Griersons: G and G, you see? The G.-G.s!”

    “Oh, I say, you mean it’s their initials?” replied Flossie brightly. “How cute.”

    “Yes, isn’t it?” Egg agreed. “So do you prepare some little somethings especially for them?”

    “That’s right, dear! Always on Sundays, of course. Just some cress sandwiches—well just between you and me and the gatepost it’s American cress,” she confided. “One never knows with watercress, does one? And there are so many cows round here, one doesn’t like to— Not with guests. But American cress is terribly easy to grow—just put it in a pot on your windowsill, making sure it gets some sun, of course,” she suddenly ordered Mr Lamont, “and it will simply sprout away! If I can do it anyone can, I have no green thumb, the garden is all dear Flora’s work! And honestly it tastes just like the real thing! And they do like a little ham, so— ’Tis only pressed ham, but then, in a sandwich— And of course it’s a nice brand. And they really love Mary Berry’s Bakewell Slices, and that’s such an easy recipe and of course baked the day before and it’s no bother to boil up the kettle for them. Loose tea, of course. Never teabags.”

    She’d defeated us. Even Egg and Flossie. We just smiled limply as she set out the pot of tea, the hot water and the cups, gave a little scream on discovering she’d forgotten the sugar bowl, and dashed off again.

    After some time the Bean managed to say: “I say, she’s forgotten the milk, too.”

    So she had. One can only draw a veil over the following scenes, really. But the eventual cream tea was superlative, the more so in that the “scohnes” with mountains of whipped cream and three sorts of home-made jam were supplemented by ham sandwiches, egg-and-cress sandwiches, and huge wedges of fruit-cake, of course baked by Daphne’s own fair hands, not to mention some of the famous Mary Berry’s famous Bakewell Slices, Mr L. remarking by the way that he wasn’t too sure what was Bakewell about them, but they were certainly worth coming over here for. And was Bean Minor sure that that orangeade was okay? It looked a bit odd, to him.

    To which the tiny sibling replied: “It’s super, actually, Mr Lamont. It tastes like real oranges, not like usual orangeade at all.”

    At which we all had to have a sip. He was right of course, his palate never fails.

    “By God,” said the Egg faintly. “I think it’s home-made.”

    “I didn’t know it could be,” remarked Bean groggily, with some justice in this instance.

    “It certainly could be eighty or ninety years back,” said Flossie with some feeling, “and I tell you chaps what: we should jolly well have worn the gear, because if your Art Deco touches were one side of the jolly old Woosterish coin, cosy cottage teas like this provided by genteel spinster ladies were dashed well the other!”

    “He’s right, y’know!” gasped Mr Lamont, going off in a roar of laughter. “We’ll have to come again, chaps, in the gear! Here’s to The Cosy Cottage Café!”

    With which we all toasted it with a will.

    As we prudently waited to let the dust of the motorised locals clear, young Bean Minor did slightly insert the old hind hoof in the maw, so to speak, by remarking: “I say, I thought it was ‘sconns’, not ‘scohnes’: did those ladies have it right?”

    “Sister Bean, I bow to your superior culinary knowledge,” said the Egg quickly, since the minor one seemed to be looking at him.

    “Est-ce que je sais, moi? Ce plat n’existe pas en France,” I replied in Grannie’s very accents.

    Flossie looked down his nose at me and explained to Bean Minor: “Standard English prefers ‘sconn’, old man, but genteel ladies in smocks tend to the ‘scohne’ side.”

    “I sort of thought they were Scottish, actually,” fumbled Crumpy.

    “In which case it would be ‘scohne’, like in the Stone Of!” I choked, falling about in paroxysms at my own brilliant wit.

    The gallant Crumpet joined in but nobody else did. Bean looked blank, Egg just smiled weakly and Flossie noted drily: “Hah, frightfully hah.” And Mr Lamont became suddenly very busy checking his credit cards, possibly doubting that anything he might proffer would be recognised by floral smocks.

    A trifle unfortunately we hadn’t taken to heart the floral-be-smocked one’s casual mention of “so many cows round here”—admittedly tangled up in the midst of all the other chat. On the way home we discovered that she hadn’t been wrong. Poor Mr Lamont was quite dismayed.

    Oh, well! Such is life. Cows on the road on the one hand, cream teas on the other. Likewise bottle blondes on the one hand—

    Er, never mind.

Next chapter:

https://theeggandfriends-anovel.blogspot.com/2025/12/a-trip-to-seaside.html