No 105 A Tea to Remember.

No 105. A tea to remember.

A bowl o’tea was standard in many houses of my early aquaintance. Along with a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar, though I have often seen an empty 1lb jam jar doing sterling service as a sugar bowl.
The bothy men had bowls filled with milk and set aside at night for their porridge in the morning. Then the same bowl held their tea to finish their breakfast with oatmeal bannocks or beremeal or flour scones.



Most farmhouses used bowls or mugs rather than teacups but would always have a set of best china for visitors or for the Minister. This was often a set passed down from a previous generation. If so it was treasured and washed only by the Mistress. If any damage was done it was her own fault!!! Kept safely on a shelf in a locked sideboard in the dining room.
We used to admire the different patterns on the fancy tea sets when visiting but as children we never got a cup for ourselves. Far too precious. Always some mugs would be found for us to have a “glass of milk”. The Mugs of 6th May, 1935 of George Vth and Queen Mary’s Silver Jubilee were much in demand, and we all got ones from school as a memento of a special day. Some are still treasured, most I guess are now broken but definitely not all!! I saw one quite recently, it brought back memories.

I never did like having a cup of tea and a saucer in my hand or on my lap, much too precarious. Still don’t!!!
Along with the bowl of tea a table would be blessed with new baked scones, flour scones, bere bread, oatcakes. Cheese and crowdie. Drop scones thickly covered with home made butter and spread with crowdie. Drop scones covered with butter and jam.
Home made jam at that, mostly rhubarb which grew wild as well as in the gardens, often with a bit of ginger in it. Or blackcurrant.

Bringing me back a long way, I was in a house just lately where the bowls appeared, beautifully patterned in deep blue. An empty glass had held a malt whisky, and a good one at that. An adventure with tea in a bowl. Drop scones new baked with crowdie on top, oven scones with thick butter!!! Most enjoyable it was.

I have had other adventures with tea in a bowl.

Going home to Stronsay from Wartime school in Inverness and going out on a very early sailing from Kirkwall on the old S.S.Thorfinn, I had breakfast on board. The galley was indeed small but warm. Another older Stronsay man I knew was also going home for a bit of leave from the Army.
Cooking was done beside us on the galley stove, the smells of Horne’s Orkney Bacon making the mouth water. Thick slices, no modern water cure then!! Fresh eggs. Thick sausages from John T. Flett’s butcher shop. Fried bread. Though rationing was now the order of the day, there was no sign of it on the Thorfinn!!
Orkney butter, Orkney cheese, jam, loaf bread in thick slices. Nestles Condensed Milk in a tin. Sugar in a jar. And scaldingly hot strong black tea in a bowl.
The other memorable tea in a bowl I had was many years later at the Dounby Show. David Leggat of Macdonald Fraser Marts from Perth, by then United Auctions, was going to Dounby to judge at the Show. I got a lift from him from the St Ola at Stromness in his hire car. It was early, the pens were just beginning to fill and judging not yet begun.
The tea tent, actually making use of an old slate roofed building, was open. I was first in, getting No 1 ticket off a roll of raffle tickets being made use of. Orphir W.R.I. was doing the catering that year, though I believe it rotates around the branches.

Trestle tables and stackable chairs. On the table home baked thick flour scones, beremeal bannocks, scones, oat cakes, loaf bread, home made butter and farm house cheese. I filled myself. And then one of the lassies topped it all when she came over to me and asked me “Wid thu like some fancies??” No chance, no room.
And to top it all, scaldingly hot strong black tea in a bowl.