19 AUGUST, 2021

Dear Harry,

Tea time. That hallowed English ritual. There were other genteel homes, aside from Miss Stone’s, where Flora and I were invited regularly to tea.

Do you recall the single woman at the bottom of what we called Sandy Hill—was that its name?—in Aspley Guise. I remember little else about this kind old lady, but I do remember very clearly the rowdy pink and grey parrot who was kept in a cage in her living room. His name was Algy and she had taught him how to dance. She would run her finger back and forth across the bars of his cage and urge him on: “Dance-y, Algy, dance-y, Algy” she would croon, and the bird would repeat the words she said in his strange parrot voice as he hopped cheerfully from claw to claw on his perch.

Then there were Mr. and Mrs. Gates, an elderly couple who lived at the end of a different sandy lane and were delighted for us to come over to visit them for tea. They had a big armchair with a footrest that could be converted into a long, wonderful slope for us to slide down. Best of all, though, was a gazebo past the little rise of the rock garden, out in the middle of their trim, green lawn. It was built on a circle of steel rails and could be turned at any time of day to face the sun. But it was also good as a carnival ride. Poor old Mr. Gates! We would sit on the cushions in the gazebo have him drag us around and around in circles on the noisy metal rails, faster and faster, until we were all dizzy and laughing in delight before Mrs. Gates would make him stop and call us in for tea.

And then, for tea time too, there were Grace and Arthur Young, who lived in a small red brick house along Main Street, also in Aspley Guise. I most often went there alone, I don’t know why, but this was my favorite place of all to go for tea because Arthur was in the Home Guard and had a .22 rifle that he taught me to shoot, setting up a row of clay flower pots as targets in their back yard and showing me how to steady the butt of the rifle tight against my shoulder and aim down the sights. I got to be quite good at smashing pots.

There was tea at the Misses Tanquerays, off the main square and next door to the sweet shop. When we went there we played games of Concentration, with buttons and pins and little silver thimbles and a dozen other tiny objects laid out in tidy order on a green felt-covered tray, to be memorized and recalled from memory, each in its exact location, when hidden by a tea towel.

And then there was tea, of course, every day at the Vicarage or the Rectory, wherever we happened to be, with sandwiches and cake and crisp biscuits, and mother pouring out the tea as mothers are meant to do.

You did love your cup of tea, didn’t you, Harry? That’s another thing I get that from you! I still bring a cup of English tea to bed first thing every morning for Ellie and myself. Never fail, never miss. I drink a cuppa, think of you, and think of Peggy. Think of England…

Cheers, Peter