Friends and old fashioned sunday tea

Today has been about friends, seeing friends at church, visiting my friend who has been very poorly for many years now and being visited by very old (not in age) friends, our best man and his wife. With some friends we are very lucky in that we can pick up where we left off, even if we haven't seen each other for a long time and today the years rolled back and all our grown up children became little ones again (in our minds eye anyway)

We chatted about previous recessions and how we got through them, without all the panic being caused by the media, which only adds to the stress! We coped with all the problems then, the insecurity, watching friends suffer negative equity, living on very, very tight budgets. Our children were small then but we coped. Our horizons were smaller perhaps, a holiday abroad was very rare, in our case we didn't go abroad until 1994. We went on camping holidays, self catered, took the cricket set and encouraged the children to make friends. Day trips meant picnics and rounders, which were great fun. Birthday parties were of the old fashioned sort, a birthday tea and party games. My house was often full of neighbours children as well as our own, they were allowed to make a mess at our house, we baked and iced cookies, played with home made play dough, and painted using potatoes. Many of my friends knitted for their children or like me sewed their little play trousers and party dresses.

Today we reinstated one favourite tradition - sunday tea, with sandwiches cut into triangles, sausage rolls, quiche, salad, crisps, hot buttered crumpets and jam, and a cake on Grandmas old china cake stand, all served with lashings of tea. So much cheaper to do than a dinner party and just as much fun. This is one tradition I am going to keep up with.