vilakins | Victorian tea party and an English city garden

It's spring! In fact it almost feels like summer but for the lack of cicadas.

Yesterday, also a perfect spring day, Greg and I went to a Victorian tea party, part of the Auckland Heritage Festival with the proceeds going to charity. It was held in what used to be a small library built at least 100 years ago (OK, that's old for here). There were dainty triangular sandwiches, asparagus rolls, little crisp almond biscuits, sponge cakes, shortbread, jam tarts, and Dundee cake. An old guy said grace in Victorian style with a blessing on 'Her Majesty the Queen' which would normally have annoyed republican me, but I smiled, thinking of the queen in Tooth and Claw. As we ate, another old gent played Victorian tunes on a piano. Dilmah tea was served in thin white china cups which always makes it taste nicer somehow, and we took our second cup outside into the garden which was lovely.

Heard between two little girls playing on the swing there: "We're really good friends. We've never ever fighted." :-)

One of the tea ladies in her apron

The garden just outside
It was very English; I don't think I saw any natives.

Me having a cuppa in the sun.
As you can see, I wasn't as nicely dressed as some.

New oak leaves

More of the garden

Greg taking our cups back
I loved the wisteria and the lead light windows in the ex-library which you can see behind him.

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Oooh - so pretty! And how nice to have a Victorian tea party!
I also love wisteria, we have a garden in Weinheim that has lots of wisteria as well. Unfortunately it takes so long for them to look pretty...

And they look dead in winter. All our native plants stay green all year round, and in one way that's nice but you don't get the spectacular seasonal changes you get elsewhere. I do love the pohuhukawa trees that bloom in summer though - 'NZ Christmas trees'. [points at icon]

Looks lovely, I love wisteria too

And bougainvillea! Lots of exotics are in flower now including the gorgeous orange things in our garden (http://www.farsight.net.nz/images/romancorner.JPG) which I adore but don't know the name for. Some sort of lily?

That sounds a lovely occasion - and looks it, too! Thanks for the photos. I think I'd have loved it; I'm glad you had a good time, too.

Is it not a library any more, then? That would have been splendid - tea in the library!

No, it's just a large empty room with wood panelling and lovely tall lead light windows. It's still called the Selwyn Library, though it's used for meetings mainly, I think. I'd like to have heard the history of it.

Tea and books would be a great combination!

There was a restaurant in New York my mom took me to a couple of times called "Anglers and Writers". It was essentially a butch tea-house, pubby but genteel, and it was called that because the walls were lined with books, particularly about fishing.

Sadly, I think it's gone now.

That sounds great. I like the idea of an eating place with books. They'd have to be short stories and essays so people could finish one with a meal and not feel tempted to nick the book though. I'd go there!

I know of a pub in Bromley in outer London that has (or at least had) some bookshelves with a stock of old paperbacks on them. I never saw anybody reading one, though.

They'd probably go better with a coffee house. People feel less need to be laddish there. ;-)

Must go to work.

Aww, that teacup & vilakins pic is really lovely!

It is! (Do you know, every time I see a pic of vilakins, I think, wow, she's so pretty.)

Heh. Big nose and hamster cheeks and all.

You don't have a big nose or hamster cheeks. :)

You haven't met me! :-) And did you ever see the ones of me with Michael Keating? :-P HAMSTERRRRR! (http://pics.livejournal.com/vilakins/pic/0000wgah)

I don't need to meet you to look at a picture of your nose and cheeks and conclude that they're not abnormally large. :)

You do not have hamster cheeks. You have the very feminine style of those 1940s cheekbones, like Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Ingrid Bergman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ingrid_Bergman_-_For_Whom_The_Bell_Tolls.jpg)...

Oh, yes! A lot of them have those curving shadows under them when I smile. I must live in the wrong time; when my hair's long, it goes into those big slow waves, very 40s.

I'm a broad! :-D Now I just need the shoulders to go with it.

Then you should grow your hair long. :) I love those waves. And with your hair colour, the effect would be sensational.

As for the big shoulders of the 1940s, weren't they largely an artifact of Dior's "New Look"?

I had it like that once and looked a little too much like my mother for comfort. And anyway, short hair suits my face shape better.

Y'see? Told ya! :)

I think I have that sort of look, too. Ah well. Swing goes in and out of style, I can wear '40s clothes anyway, I guess. :)

Great photo. The strange thing is that if I didn't know that it was real I would take it for an image created using Poser. It has that "feel" to it.

That "feel" is probably just Technicolor. :)

:-) The sun was so bright (we have almost no ozone layer right now) I was squinting like crazy. My shirt is really quite a bright lime green and I'm disappointed the jacket looks so sloppy. It's grey piped in light grey and is quite smart and sort of military when buttoned to the waist.

It's a bit Vila-ish. He wears a lot of grey jackets.

But there are no targets!

Victorian tea party and an English city garden

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