The Health and Safety Garden Party

Awfully bad weather today, don’t you know. Raining cats and Dawgs. One decided that one was better orf having a day chez moi and so I dressed up for the occasion, as one does. I picked out my  best cherry design bow tie to go with the cherry cake, brewed some Earl Grey tea to compliment the grey day outside and was terribly chuffed to realise that I also had some Dundee cake in. Well a “Hairy Hibernian Hurrah and Hussar!” A jolly fine, and brolly free, afternoon English tea was had by me. What? Bring on the salmon and cucumber sarnies!

Soon it will time for the Dangerous Open Gardens season when gardening enthusiast folk open their treacherous gardens so that one can cripple oneself on their crazy paving or enjoy an accidental drowning experience in their ornamental pond.  Once upon a Summer I attended such an event run by the local ‘very politically correct’ Health and Safety Officers, Sue Mee and her nervous husband, Roger Mee.

Weeds (complete time wasters) were banned in the garden outright. Every single flower and blade of grass had a label warning of a myriad of possible health hazards if fondled, sniffed or eaten and Roger Mee spent the afternoon warding off unsuitable types of all three sexes who had mistaken his name for a come on.  

Dundee cake

The Indian tea (collected from a plantation run by the Sponsor a Deprived Third World Hillside Charity) was nice enough as were the dainty egg and organic cress sandwiches exclusively made with gluten free bread (just in case someone, somewhere was allergic). The bread crusts had been cut off, not for aesthetics but to prevent libel action should someone chip a tooth or choke.  To further prevent libel they had been bagged up and frozen for safe removal by Mr Crusty the Environmentalist from the Borough Council. The collected crusts would then be assembled into an Igloo shape, re-frozen and delivered by Yak to the Eskimos as a way of saving snow and also persevering their way of life. The whole scheme was run by Upper Crusts Save the Igloos Campaign.

The eggs had been laid that morning on the Mee allotment by deliriously happy hens and had been checked by an Eggspert (Sally Monella) before being boiled and buffeted. The garden party seemed to be going well so far.

Sadly, the tempestuous, Sue Mee, did  eventually have a hissy fit when some poor, innocent, chap complimented her on the ‘pretty in pink’ cupcakes. “Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I made the effing cakes!” said she, cleaving the trestle table in two with a fist of iron. For a moment in time the sky looked full of cupcakes and fine china. Sue Mee stormed off. Someone that it was all a ‘storm in a teacup’.  Sue was last seen skulking in the dark scullery resembling Medusa on a bad hair day. Roger Mee was last seen being chased across the patio by a large amorous poodle.

They haven’t organised a tea party since. Roger has subsequently re-married and he and Dolores, the poodle, are very happy together. His cupcakes are legendary.