Living On Three Continents: Tea With Auntie Mabel
Not long after consuming a full English breakfast you are confronted with a stack of salmon sandwiches, a large pork pie, a jar of pickles, fruit jelly, a Victoria sponge cake, some of your favourite chocolate biscuits...
Susan Siddeley describes the delicious ordeal of visiting her Auntie Mabel.
“The kettle’s on,” cried Auntie Mabel leading the way into her eat-in kitchen. I pushed through the small living room with its familiar three-piece suite and flickering fire, pulling off my coat and squinting at the display of photos crammed on top of the sideboard. Over a cup of tea, Auntie Mabel would bring me up to date with the latest family additions and departures in graphic detail.
On recent visits to England, it has become the habit to fly into Manchester and cross to the East Coast where my mother lives in easy steps, not just enjoying the trans-Pennine scenery, but seeing people on the way. This trip a few years ago was no exception.
“So how are you Auntie?” I swung into the kitchen ready for a relaxing low-down, only to pull up short at the sight before me. The table was spread with a starched lace cloth, on which sat half a dozen pieces of Auntie Mabel’s best china, filled with enough food to feed the whole village back in Chile. There was a stack of salmon sandwiches, a large pork pie, a jar of pickles, a trifle, some fruit jelly, a Victoria sponge and dish of my favorite chocolate wholemeal biscuits. I stared, completely taken aback.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon. I had already had a ‘Full English’ at my B&B, morning coffee with an old neighbour and lunch with a friend’s mother.
“There, get that lot eaten!” Auntie Mabel pulled out a chair pushed me onto it.
“But Auntie,” I protested “you said a cup of tea. I have to drive to Whitby!”
“Nay Susan lass, we feed folk proper here. Sit down.”
I looked again. There were two cups and saucers, but only one set place.
“Where are you sitting?”
“Here,” and Auntie Mabel nodded towards a buffet by the sink.
“But aren’t you going to eat?”
Auntie Mabel threw me one of her challenging looks - looks which have felled everything from cocky youth to patronizing police and churchmen … despite the fact they emanate from under a halo of snow-white hair barely four feet above the ground.
“Nah, I’m going to watch you. Why, what’s the matter?”
“Well, I’m not that hungry…. I can’t tackle all this on my own.”
“Get stuck in. You’re a growing girl. We don’t see you often.
‘I’m well over fifty!” I tried. It never did to get into logic.
“Nobbut a lass! Wait till you’re my age. Then you’ll know. Get it eaten, all of it. I’ve got it in special.”
“But surely, you can have something? ”
“Ah can’t,” replied Auntie Mabel, her eighty-year-plus feistiness suddenly falling away.
“I’ve only just had me dinner!”
