Tales from the first year of respectable married life...

 Judging a book by its cover (or its name)

I don’t think politicians should be judged on their appearance. For example, there are far more important criticisms to make of Donald Trump than his comb-over and the fact that he looks like he’s been tango-ed.  Complaining about Boris Johnson’s hair being like a thinning blonde floor mop or his face resembling a potato simply distracts from serious consideration of his inadequacies as a human being. The fact that someone looks old (Joe Biden), robotic (Theresa May), or like an unhinged doll possessed by a demon (Vladimir Putin) is irrelevant in the greater scheme of things.

‘Good-looking’ doesn’t equate to ‘good person’ and ‘ugly’ doesn’t equate to ‘evil’, though admittedly Margaret Thatcher’s various cabinets were remarkably unattractive.

However, I must highlight one thing about Liz Truss’s appearance. I personally find her face remarkably anonymous, almost forgettable, the sort of face that blends into the crowd. One US TV presenter apparently failed to recognize her at the queen’s funeral and I can sort of see why. She has a great figure, but her face is, to my eyes, the paradigm case of plainness – I don’t mean she is ugly or particularly unattractive, just that her face is so ordinary, so everyday, that it becomes unmemorable.

However, it also has a strange capacity to make elderly people see it as astonishingly ugly, for some reason. My mum says she can’t stand ‘that woman’s face – she has no chin’, even though Truss looks to me as if she has been normally-endowed in the chin department. And my mother-in-law thinks she looks as if she’s had a stroke, though I can’t see that myself. Having said this, my mum-in-law thinks Adele can’t sing (‘She just shouts,’ she claims), so she’s obviously not a reliable judge. An elderly neighbour recently told me she thought Truss’s face looked like a cushion, and a friend told me that her father had described our PM as having ‘a face like a poached egg’ (!!!).

Can the elderly see something we younger people are missing?

Personally, it’s her name that I find more problematic. When I first heard it, I muddled her up with Lynne Truss who wrote ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’, so now I can’t help vaguely thinking our PM is a member of the Clear and Correct English Brigade. The name ‘Truss’ suggests ‘trust’ and ‘truth’ (thereby seeming ironic when associated with Lizzie), and also makes me think of my grandma telling me once when I was a child that a man she knew had a hernia and had to wear a truss. I have no idea what a truss is. I imagine a harness of some sort, something designed to hold something up or hold something in….

 

Afternoon Tea In God's Own County

Two old schoolfriends and myself have begun going out for regular afternoon teas during the past eighteen months. This is a bad thing as one of us is diabetic, and one is pre-diabetic, but we will gloss over that. There is something about an afternoon tea that makes you feel warm and fuzzy, I think – the theatrics of having tiers of goodies placed in the middle of your table by a smiling waitress, the intimacy of sharing the collection of sandwiches and cakes, the peculiar buzz of anticipation as you wait to see what treasures will be included (which is odd because it is usually very much the usual suspects, isn’t it?).

I always wish there was more savoury stuff and fewer cakes. My favourite afternoon teas include things like sausage rolls, mini quiches and pork pies. Nevertheless, I am partial to the one thing that seems to be a certainty on every afternoon tea, which is a cream scone. However, I object to the recent default position adopted by many local cafes which is to warm the scone up. In my view, the only reason to warm up a scone is if it is stale, and a warm cream scone is horrible as it melts the clotted cream. However, as always, I am swimming against the tide on this...

 Our most recent afternoon tea was at a local upmarket Garden Centre, where we were led out of the main restaurant, through a little garden and into a large wooden hut like a very large and very swish garden shed. Here, a smily waitress stood, throughout our meal, as if on guard, close enough to our table to listen in to our inane conversation, which was very slightly inhibiting. It didn't stop us wittering on however. I don't think anything less than a direct nuclear strike could.  As always, we were the last ones to leave the restaurant and all the chairs had been put on the tables in readiness for floor washing, when we did finally wend our way out of the building! 

The service was excellent, though the smily waitress had to bring the tiered plates containing the food from the main restaurant and through the garden to us. It was a drizzly day, so a second waitress had to hold a golfing umbrella over the first waitress as they proceeded through the garden. It gave us something to watch during lulls in the conversation.

One problem we’ve had is that one of our trio is one of those people who are picky with food. At the garden centre afternoon tea, there was a pleasant array of crustless finger sandwiches – cheese, ham, egg mayo, prawn, tuna – but the café had put tomato chutney on the ham sandwiches and Branston pickle on the cheese sandwiches, rendering them inedible to our picky friend. As she won’t allow a prawn to pass her lips, she was left with very little to choose from. Could they not put the pickles in little dishes on the side for those who want them? Some places do that. There was a lovely array of high quality tarts and cakes – miniature cream scones, chocolate mousse cake, bakewell tart, meringues, carrot cake, little cheese cakes in plastic pots – but they hadn’t provided three of everything, which might have led to squabbles, had we been the sort of women who would squabble over a meringue.

Sharing food doesn’t always work well with Yorkshire people. Tapas bars haven’t taken off up here as well as they have elsewhere. Many of us are fussy eaters, which means others have to give up things they like to make sure the fussy eater doesn't expire of starvation. Many of us are hygiene freaks who can’t bear the thought of eating a sandwich that might have been touched by the hand of one of their close friends or family members (you might scoff at this and think I’m exaggerating, but my own mother won’t share a melted camembert or a dish of olives of a sharing platter with anyone. She’d rather go hungry). And if there is a variety of items to choose from, there is always the potential for resentment over perceived unfairness.

My two friends and I, of course,  aren’t at all like this. Other than the before-mentioned fussy-eatership of one of our number, we are delightful models of tolerance, politeness and generous-spirit, who value the scintillating conversation more than the opportunity to raise our blood sugar to dangerous levels.

            But if ever you are lost and have no idea where you are – let’s say you have suffered a bump on the head during a train journey and lost your memory, and are now wandering round the streets of some small grey-stoned town wondering where in hell you have landed – all you have to do to locate yourself is look into the nearest teashop window. If a group of women are yelling obscenities over a tiered set of plates, throwing meringues at one another and flicking Branston pickle at the waitress, you’ll know you’re in Yorkshire…