No Tomatoes

I recall I wanted to write about a meal, but I cannot remember what, so let us stroll through my synaptic haze and potter about the neurons –ah yes, there it is, an English cream tea. Perhaps part of the reason I had nearly forgotten was that it was so unfitting for its context; it certainly wasn’t the food. On second thoughts, that would bring the mundane and homogenous to the front of the mind; clearly contrast to context makes something literally extraordinary, and therefore memorable. The fault, I conclude, must lie with me.

Though it was a while since we had a lecture on brain formation and properties, I will use it to excuse the protracted beginnings to this quiet fizzle of opinion. Actually opening the door to the cubicle in my mind, I can read my scrawled notes and cast my eyes now to the fleet of fat koi swarming about my discarded Pringle. We had just been to a 700 year old bamboo forest in Kamakura and broached the rope to descend to waters nearby. Mina tried putting in her feet, but the watery riot put her off. We ate chicken and sun-dried tomato sandwiches smeared with pesto, but they are not the subject of this column, not least because I prepped them.

Dust the seat of our trousers, and let’s tumble up the hill. Passing the temple’s threshold, so I imagined that one day I would have a garden to brush by before entering my house. A cat lounges as I glance through occasional sprigs; soon a sign to an English garden beckons. It is hot, and long, low steps slouch upwards to a driveway where a middle-aged woman lies tits up on a bench, asleep in the afternoon sun. It is quiet and the smothered harrumph of another couple descending a steeper path vanishes in the tranquility of this green valley, and in the heat our paces slow with the ascent to the hill-top cafe.

I was, to be honest, thrilled to find a cream tea parlour, and even better that it was so bloody good, that the scones were floury and slightly scented by the raisins nestling within. The blackcurrant jam, something I pathetically tend to avoid, homemade also, and the tea a rich Assam, coloured white with green in reflection of my grandmother’s similar brews. A sturdy bare table forced legs to crumple, but I was happy to stretch the elastic by which Tokyo binds me.

We noticed the ring as we left, but I mention it now as my abiding memory, that an engagement ring wrapped in diamonds had been left on the side for its owner to reclaim. Had that not been there, I would have sooner been aware of the rods of coins also left unchecked next to the till. Apart from this telling relay of the country we are in, everything else was most welcomely English.