Tea for two

Back-blipping again, but had to record another great day. Hurricane Maria and I raced round this morning getting the house spick and span for a visit from a TV team. They're filming a series of interviews with expats from some of the countries that will be sending competitors to the Olympics, to see how their homes and customs reflect the two cultures, and it’s my honour to represent the Brits. In the end, after all our hard work, they called to say they couldn’t make it to the house today, but sent a car to take me downtown to Rio’s most traditional café and restaurant, Confeitaria Colombo. Barrioboy and digitaldaze know it well – it’s superbly decorated in what I think must be Art Nouveau style, with huge mirrors and lots of gilt.
 
I was a little apprehensive, but the TV team couldn’t have been more relaxed and friendly, and the café staff fell over backwards to help, serving us a traditional tea, on china that is normally kept under lock and key as a relic of times past. The idea was to highlight the British tea tradition – here it’s referred to as the ‘chá dos cinco’, five o’clock tea, but I believe ‘posh’ tea, with cucumber sandwiches and all the trimmings, would be served at 4 pm (to the Queen, for instance), and 5 pm is probably the time workers in the British-run sugar and textile mills and other industries in Brazil had a break for what we, as kids, called high tea. In many places, ‘tea’ is even later, corresponding to what I think of as supper.
 
Anyway, we had a delicious tea and a lot of fun, and when we left, the reporter and I were presented with a beautiful coffee-table book each. The extra photo gives a better view of the décor, and I’m clasping the bag with the book.