Dec 2 - Doncaster High Tea

Raspberry Lindor Ball

“My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?”
  - Bob Hope





  Weighed in this morning to assess the damage.  I was 106.1kg which was a 600g gain on the end of year aim.  That's not bad, I'm pretty pleased with that.  I definitely indulged while on holidays but I also did a lot more activity so it seems to be a fair gain to me.
  I spent the morning checking emails received while I was away, unpacking bits and pieces and blogging.  Blogging blogging blogging.  I seem to have a demanding readership!  And I'm glad so many of you have enjoyed the holiday blogs.
  Knowing I was in store for another small scale pig-out this afternoon, I held off eating but around 11am I gave in and had a small brunch so that I could take some ibuprofen for my back.  I had two slices of a small rustic pizza from Wanda Pizza with a 375ml can of Coke Zero.
  I got a call from work sometime around noon, one of the customer service staff.  They were running low on Gift Cards!  This is kind of cool as we had only started our big 'bonus value' Christmas promotion yestreday and I made sure they had 50 cards before I left.  Luckily I had also put 50 in our other point of sale and that one isn't open on weekends so they were able to top up with an extra 50 cards.
  Around 1:20pm I head off toward my high tea with the ladies.  We went to Beau Monde International in Doncaster.  I arrived just on time.  Many lovely frocked up ladies were lined up in the foyer ready to go in as I strolled up the stairs.  I looked around and there were Masterchef and Miss M, already waiting in line.  As I joined them the line began to enter.
  We sat down and collected our Swarovski crystal earrings, included in the price, and waited for things to get underway.  We were offered tea or coffee to begin with, I opted for a black tea with milk and one sugar.  Followed soon after by bubbles or orange juice, I chose the latter.  As far as food service went, things were a little slow.  Cake stands of fingers sandwiches, miniature desserts and scones came flowing out of the kitchen..... to all of the tables that weren't us.
  We suspected that some of this lack of attention could be down to our empty setting.  Regrettably our party was one short.  Fly Girl was not with us today for this, the final high tea of 2012.  Why not?  Because, living up to her name, she had only just flown home from Prague and other wonderful places in Europe.  She needed to recover from her whirlwind European trip and catch up with her family.
  Once they understood that our party was, for today, complete, our delights soon arrived.  And good thing too.  I was completely famished at this point.
An all-you-could-eat supply of plain scones and chocolate chip scones, pots of jam and cream on the table, miniature desserts, cakes, tarts and squares of sweet things and lovely finger sandwiches on soft crustless bread.
  The plain scones were quite good, a little on the heavy side but a nice quality of jam and cream makes all the difference.  The chocolate chip scones I can do without.  Chocolate just doesn't belong in a scone, at least not in chip form.  We ordered more plain scones but we didn't get through the whole second plate full.
  The cakes weren't brilliant.  Pleasant enough but forgettable.  We definitely didn't bother to finish them all.  I tried a square thing that looked like either a vanilla slice or a cheesecake square but turned out to be neither.  It was almost like blancmange on a biscuit, rather odd.  The only other one I tried was a square of sponge with a dollop of cream on top, nothing memorable.
  The sandwiches were really the highlight for me.  The bread was very soft and fresh.  It's all too easy for places to make sandwiches too far in advance and they come out dry around the edges.  The fillings were simple but classic, egg salad, smoked salmon, ham, roast beef and the quintessential cucumber sandwiches.  We managed two plates of the sandwiches between the three of us.
  But of course, the best thing about high tea with the girls is nothing to do with the tea and everything to do with the girls.  I love these girls.  Finger sandwiches and scones and bloody good conversation.  We discussed my holiday, their past holidays, Miss M has a lot of Tasmania in her background.
 Talk of Port Arthur led to the sharing of ghost stories and our varying degrees of skepticism and belief, and about prison systems.  Talking of the Seperate Prison and its sensory deprivation techniques moved us on to situational morality and dehumanisation of 'the enemy'.  The Holocaust, the Stanford Prison Experiment, military propaganda and various disturbing books we'd read that expose mans inhumanity to man.  I shall have to read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas I suspect.
  We had wonderful in depth and varied conversations and we were the last to leave.  In fact we ignored the waiters until they'd cleared all the tables but ours.  Fair play for being served last.  In all we spent three hours enjoying ourselves thoroughly but eventually of course, we had to take the hint and leave courteously.
  Masterchef and Miss M headed off home and I headed off for the home of the Seamstress to pick up GoGo from her holiday.  Needle and Thread greeted me at the door.  "Are you going to take GoGo away now?" quizzed Needle.  I confirmed his suspicions and let them both have a cuddle before I took her away.  Huge thanks to the family for taking such good care of her, especially LawnMowerMan who helped me clip her nails before I took her home.
  Once I got home and carefully lugged GoGo and her accoutrement inside, it was back to blogging and I finally finished off Thursday and Friday.  I'm kind of dreading seeing the state of my inbox tomorrow morning but there is nothing I can do about it really.  I just wish it wasn't on top of the busiest week of the year!  Half-year end is a pain in the bum.  I only get six business days to complete my normal month.
  The positive side of being thoroughly fixated on finishing the two blogs was that I forgot to eat anything for dinner.  Off to bed to read and prepare myself for the day ahead!
  Jess