We need to finish last week's haberdashery trip so with a multitude of tea shops to choose from in Ashburton, some very modern and minimalist, some quite contrived in their olde worlde quaintness, we headed for this one.
You couldn't get this look or manufacture this atmosphere no matter how hard you tried and it's so popular, often you can't get a foot in the door and in Winter the windows are deliciously and snugly steamed over. The sort of place where you'd probably get a decent scrambled egg on toast too.
It's cluttered, homely, and cosy and run by two gentlemen and a very beseeching dog. There's a fine cake table and when the tea arrives you can be sure the cups won't match the saucers and the teapot will be of its own mind too, but that matters not.
As I glanced at the books (as I would) on the shelf by the table there was Stephen Fry peeping around the edge of an early edition of Florence White's Good Things In England, ( now reprinted by Persephone Books)
Heading off to Topsham and my other Haberdashery Heaven in The Quayside Antiques Centre. Linens, starched and embroidered with that Lazy Daisy stitch we were all taught to perfect, buttons, more linen, old Christening gowns and ancient knitting patterns to make baby's pilches.
and an ancient and tumbledown tea cosy
Upstairs another favourite corner, many a copy of Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker found here for friends. Thanks to Bloomsbury it will be soon be back in print and I have much over-excitement to share and prize draw copies of the first two in their new Bloomsbury Group series later this week.
and why is that when you go out and about with an author's name in your head suddenly you see their books everywhere?
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