The Tilted Teapot replaces East Redstone Antiques

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Last year East Redstone Antiques, one of the tearooms in my little guidebook, had to close.

For a while the premises they had occupied, near Coupar Angus in Perthshire, lay empty, but earlier this year a new tearoom popped up to take its place – The Tilted Teapot:


The other day the delightful assistants and I tootled along there to partake of a little luncheon.


Soup of the day was tomato and we all chose to have it:

I must say, it was jolly tasty.

After the soup, delightful assistant no.1 and myself opted to dive straight in to the sweet treats, while delightful assistant no.2 continued with the savouries.

He chose a tuna mayonnaise roll, which came with salad, crisps and coleslaw and a wonderfully soft and fluffy white roll. He was very pleased with everything on the plate and ate it all up like a good boy:

While he was eating that, delightful assistant no.1 and I browsed the cake cabinet:

And found something you don’t normally see on a tearoom menu:

After some indecision, I went for a piece of carrot cake:

Which I washed down with a very smooth and enjoyable cup of decaf coffee:

Delightful assistant no.1 went for a rhubarb tart, which was liberally decorated with icing sugar and had a little air hole in the top that made me think of Inuit fishing through the Arctic ice:

Both assistants opted for tea, which came in a large teapot covered with a very impressive knitted teacosy:

The teacups were vast, holding about the same as a reasonably large mug might hold:

Although the antiques that previously filled this tearoom had gone, there were some locally crafted items for sale in the area we walked through to get to the tearoom:

My favourite things were the small and colourful knitteds, made by a local lady who can’t see to read knitting patterns any more and so created these without any guidance:

I wished I knew a baby who would fit into this delightful little mauve number:

Afternoon tea at Bonhard

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After posting about the closure of one of the fine tearooms in my tearoom guidebook recently, I think it’s high time I redressed the balance by writing about another tearoom that had closed but has now reopened. Hurrah!

This tearoom lies only about 3 miles from the one that recently closed, on the outskirts of the city of Perth (the Scottish one).

It’s one of these wonderful pairings of a tearoom and another business, in this case a plant nursery. One of the utterly splendid things about having a tearoom in a plant nursery is that you can stick tables outside and, on a sunny day, your customers can soak up the rays surrounded by beautiful plants. Thus, they are refreshed both internally and externally, so to speak.

My delightful assistant and I took advantage of this situation one sunny day a couple of months ago when we trotted off to the Bonhard Nursery and Garden Centre:

It being afternoon tea time, we took afternoon tea, in the form of tea and scones with jam and cream:

My delightful assistant had ordinary black tea and a fruit scone, while I chose Lady Grey tea and a cherry scone. The fruit scone certainly looked good (and I’m assured it was delightful) but I thought my cherry scone was an outstanding specimen:

It was absolutely stuffed with cherries:

Paired with jam and cream and a lovely Lady Grey, it was simply delicious:

Feeling well pleased with ourselves after our repast, we enjoyed a mooch round the plants:

We left the garden just as dark storm clouds were rolling in:

I’ve since been back to Bonhard on a colder day when I sat indoors instead and had a hot brunch, and I can report that it too was excellent.

Tearoom closure

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I’m very sorry to say that one of the tearooms in my book, “Tearoom Delights: a little guide to delightful tearooms of Perthshire, Angus and Dundee” has recently had to close.

If you have a copy of the book, it’s no.18 on the map, East Redstone Antiques.

The ladies who ran East Redstone rented the premises and when their lease came up for renewal this year the owner insisted on a 3 year renewal. They didn’t feel able to commit to such a long lease in these uncertain times and, despite trying to negotiate a shorter lease, in the end had to accept that the shop and tearoom would close.

I’m not sure if they’re going to try and reopen it elsewhere, when I spoke to them about it some weeks ago they didn’t seem too convinced of the likelihood of that, but I live in hope.

It was such a fantastic wee tearoom with lots of atmosphere and very friendly service, not to mention outstanding lemon drizzle cake and excellent tea.

For the time being at least, there is no more East Redstone Antiques, but if I ever hear of it reopening I’ll be posting about it on here.

Here are a couple of photos to remember it by:

The beautiful antique shop at East Redstone, as was

A superbly lemony lemon drizzle cake and a first rate cup of Yorkshire tea:

A very happy memory: lemon drizzle cake and a nice cup of tea

Published!

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Just a quick post to celebrate my first book’s publication today! A last, a bit later than anticipated, it’s arrived, in lots of boxes:

Copies can be ordered via ebay or from me (teacups@sent.com), and I hope to get some into bookshops and tearooms within the coming weeks.

More details to follow soon.

Steptoe’s Yard

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Yesterday my delightful assistant and I visited a haven of second hand goods called Steptoe’s Yard, a few miles north of Montrose in the county of Angus.

I was on the hunt for vintage china. My sister (who had been before) had warned me that this place was incredible, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what hit me on arrival. This was the corner for garden implements, brushes, buckets, etc.:

Most of the china was housed inside sheds, but we didn’t realise that at first, and spent some time rummaging through baskets of it on trestle tables in the yard. Outside, everything was a bit wet and grubby, and much of it had green stuff growing on it:

Inside, it was much better:

I restricted myself to 14 teacups, saucers and tea plates (6 of one and 8 of another design), and one china plate. I’m collecting this sort of thing in order to sell it at Perthshire’s Birnam Fayre (run by Exclusively Highlands) in October, where I’m having a stall selling my Tearoom Delights books.

I booked the stall originally for just selling the book, but then I thought that a stall selling nothing but multitudinous copies of one small book might look a bit odd,  hence padding it out with some teatime accessories. These are the teacups, saucers and plates I bought:

They’re in excellent condition but, as you can see, they need a little tender loving care and cleaning:

That’s my job for this afternoon.

Steptoe’s Yard is so large that we didn’t actually explore all of it, so I think another visit may be in order before the fayre.

Sink or swim

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Do you ever get the feeling that you’re only just keeping your head above water?

Photo courtesy of Corbis Images (corbisimages.com)

I feel like that with technology sometimes, and with the business of creating a publishing company and writing a book. Actually writing the book isn’t the difficult part, it’s all the other stuff that comes with it that I struggle with.

For example, today I’ve been trying to figure out how to give customers the option of buying my book using PayPal.  I added a page to this blog called ‘Buy the book’ that I hoped would address the problem. However, I then discovered I had no control over postage rates to different countries. PayPal can seemingly only calculate one postage rate, so I would either have to overcharge to UK addresses or undercharge to overseas addresses.

I spent ages on PayPal’s website and on discussion forums trying to figure this out, only to find lots of other frustrated punters like me who are unable to get round the problem. This was not the only trouble I had with PayPal, but I won’t bore you with any more details because it really is very tedious.

In the end, I deleted the page I had been trying to create, and will attempt it again another day when my head is clearer. It has been somewhat exasperating!

Photo courtesy of The Work at Home Lifestyle

I started working for myself last year, after years of working for other people, and I now wonder if I could ever go back to being an employee in someone else’s company. There were certainly plus points about that way of working, not having to concern myself with so much admin, accounting, organisation, etc. but on the other hand I love the freedom this way of working gives me. I have to accept that in choosing this lifestyle, I have increased my responsibilities (which includes having to do some things I would rather someone else did!) but it’s a huge boon being able to fit my work around my life in a way that wasn’t possible before.

Photo courtesy of Confessions of a Pioneer Woman

Self-discipline is a challenge when you’re working from home (at least, it is if you’re as easily distracted as I am) but I can work at any time of day wearing whatever I feel like, even start work in my pyjamas while I eat my breakfast if I want to.

Photo courtesy of The Guardian

It can be a bit of a lonely existence too, I suppose, not having any work colleagues to motivate you, but I think the blogging community plays a big part in making up for that.

I would be very interested to know how you choose to work, do you work for someone else, or for yourself? Would you like to change your lifestyle and working practices?