Mood: 
chatty
Now Playing: Change a heart, Change the world (Jump 5)
Food Preparation
The Volunteer Tea Party (VTP) preparation was not difficult at all. When I arrived in the pantry, I was assigned to cutting tiny rolls and along with Hilda (not real name 
). Anyway, we buttered these and filled them with smoked salmon and cream cheese, ham and cheese, and just plain salad.
Eventually, I ended up helping Mabel (again not real name) … who is from the Catholic congregation. Oh yeah, the church is ecumenical - never heard of that until I arrived in the UK. Pretty much ecumenical means that all denominations are welcomed to worship together and at the moment we have 5 main denominations: Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans and the United Reformed Church (which makes up the Presbyterians – which I am! – and the the Congregationalists – which I’ve never heard of).
Scones, Jam and Teeth
Anyway, Mabel and I were spreading strawberry jam on the scones which were eventually going to have cream on them (they tasted heavenly! … I love scones particularly raisin scones with clotted cream … hmmm… delicious). Well, as we spreading the strawberry jam, Mabel was telling me all about her dentist and how he did a botch job on her dental plate, and really wanted to assure me of the following:
“I have all of my own teeth except for that dental plate”.
Ohhh… did I happen to mention the next closest person in age to me during that volunteer tea party and for the preparation was probably 45 – if so little? I wanted to laugh out aloud because, here was this relatively old lady talking to me about have her own teeth, I thought I was in the twilight zone for the moment … I’ve never had discussions and assurances of people telling me they had their own teeth.
Confession Time
Anyway, Mabel went on to tell me a funny story about one confession that she had with a Priest down in London. Mabel related the following story to me:
“Well, when ever I go to confession, I usually tell the Father something about myself, so he will understand the context. Some of my friends don’t and they think this is strange, but I always do this. I always say how old I am and what my status is”, she told me setting the scene and continued,
“So, I went in to the confession booth, and I said, I am 66 and I’m single. Then the Father replied to me, ‘Me too!’”, and with that she started laughing and me joining in.
She said later, “My friends said I should have told him, let’s hook up – won’t that have been funny!”.
The Party: Barber Shop and Jiving
Anyway, Mabel and I worked a bit longer together in particular setting out the plates and coffee cups and saucers and the joined in with the party, which was quite fun even though I was at least 15 years younger than everyone. The food was good – after all I did help prepare it! There were some fun quizzes, a raffle and they had a Barber Shop performance (all females and 12 of them to boot!). One of the guys quipped at my table,
“That’s one large barber shop!”.
The singing was quite good and then we were entertained by the kids who usually do dance classes at the church during the week (there are a lot of secular activities that occur at the church). It was great fun since they did some jiving for us. And I decided then and there I really should go learn to do jiving.
I took 6 lessons in salsa and that served me really well during my trip to Mexico … I think I could take 6 lessons in jiving – besides I like jive music, so shouldn’t be too much of a hardship. So, let’s see … I’ve learnt salsa, learnt some traditional Mexican dancing, snuck into a ballroom and learnt 18th century ballroom dancing and did some barn-dancing. Yup, I think jiving should definitely be my next dancing lesson adventure.
