Sunday 22 February 2015

Cream tea with Thomas Cromwell


This video-mapping project is taking up a lot of my time. It's a good job I don't watch T.V.

Actually, I do watch some on catch-up and I am currently enthralled with 'Wolf Hall', starring the bloke with a soft, indeterminate accent and two lumps of black fluff stuck on his forehead for eyebrows. Very expressive black fluff, mind you. They have to be, the way he delivers his lines.

Today, we are supposed to be driving to nearby Great Chalfield Manor which stands-in for the long demolished Wolf Hall, the home of Thomas Cromwell.

All the interior scenes are shot there, and the exterior ones rely heavily on the old set for Hogwarts - the also nearby Lacock Abbey (or 'La Coq', as I heard a French tourist pronounce it once).

Every now and then, a dubiously-motivated councillor will defend an ugly but lucrative building development in Bath by saying, "We don't want to live in a museum!", to which my response is, "Why not?"

Great Chalfield is situated near Melksham, but is closer to its appropriately named sister village of 'Little Chalfield'.

A friend of mine called Sarah used to run a charming tea-gardens in Little Chalfied during the Summer months of years ago, and people would flock far and wide to go there at the weekends - not just because of the cream-teas, but because Sarah and her husband ran the place along the lines of a benign Fawlty Towers.

Sarah had an impressive cleavage which belied her wasp-waist and tiny stature, and spoke in an extremely upper-class accent. She still does. Her voice is one of those breathlessly lispy ones which makes her sound as if absolutely everything is a joyous surprise to her.

Customers would find a rickety table at her tea garden, and eventually she would come running over, covered in flour and trying to find a pencil to take their order. If the pencil - or pad - was not in her pinafore, she would run off and come back 20 minutes later with either one or the other, but never both together.

Since all they served were cream teas, all she had to remember was the quantity ordered and which table ordered them, but she still needed to write it all down because she also cooked them in the kitchen - almost to order.

I sat there once and when she arrived - dusty-white and flustered - I asked for a cream tea. Her face fell as she broke the bad news to me.

"I'm SO sorry Tom, but we have run out of flour so I can't make any more scones. We still have plenty of tea though!" It was very early in the afternoon and she was looking on the positive side.

I miss that place.

19 comments:

  1. I remember a Pub' near Farnham where the publican would turn off the lights if one ordered beer. "There's no profit on beer" he would say "I'm not wasting money on electricity". Nothing to do with the above, but it just came to mind.

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    1. Cro. It's called, as you well know, a lock in. Must be good ale in Farnham if you didn't hear the bell.

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    2. The landlord was lying, unless he had a really bad deal with the brewery. These days it's 70% tax, and there is still a lot of profit.

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  2. Am loving ' Wolf Hall '. Mark Rylance, who plays Thomas Cromwell, was on Desert Island discs on Friday.
    We stayed in a B&B in Matlock once that was run by a man who must have based himself on Basil Fawlty ….. we had to be in at a certain time, got told off if our children so much as dropped a crumb on the floor at breakfast and he wouldn't get us a drink until Coronation Street was finished !! I wonder how long he survived ?
    Have a good day …… will you be stopping for a cream tea ? XXXX

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    1. That sounds like the actual man that Basil was based on. He did exist.

      Yes I heard Mark Rylance on DID - he seems a nice man and quite un-lovvie for an actor.

      The weather has turned so shite that I think we are staying indoors today with the heaters on...

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  3. I heard Mark Rylance on DID too, he sounded a bit lovey dovey about his wife's ex husband like he was must be hugging him all the while and praising him for letting him take his wife. I dont watch Wolf Hall because Hilary Mantel wrote it and she is vile.

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    1. Well his friend's daughter - his step-daughter - did more or less die in his arms on a plane. Hilary Mantel looks a bit strange, but I have nothing against her. What strange criteria you employ to decide what you watch and what you don't.

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    2. I wouldn't be watching it anyhow because I don't like historical stuff. I am of the here and now.

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    3. I've entered a competition where the first prize is two nights in Bath for some Fashion festival....

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    4. I am of the there and then.

      Dress up as Jane Austen if you win and want to come incognito.

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    5. It is called Bath In Fashion Festival 21-29 March, and has nothing to do with Jane Austen Festival which is later or do you all dress as Austen's characters throughout the year?

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    6. Yes, everyone dresses-up and promenades around every day, trying to look genteel. Women flutter their fans in front of their mouths, and men stuff Adidas socks down the front of their breeches.

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    7. Or is it the other way round? I forget.

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    8. I recently heard the beautiful Ms Mantel sounding almost normal... I nearly wet meself.

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  4. Hello Tom: Some of us over here are anxiously awaiting that show which won't be on our PBS stations until April- I have a plan to read the book first. We'll see how that turns out.

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    1. I love everything about it. Lots of natural or candle light as well, which adds to the atmosphere.

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    2. Cannot wait! Wishing we could hop over March and into April - not just because of the show - this weather has been trying.

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    3. I'll swap you some of our rain for some of your snow.

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    4. Actually snow is better - with rain, our basement can flood. I'm not looking forward to the big melt. But thanks for the offer!

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