A Toast to the Past

Gregory Kerry on the memories provoked by food and drink

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I can rarely open a box of Yellow Label tea bags here where I now live in Nanjing, China without at least a passing thought to the tea of my English childhood.

It came with one weekly treat that I recall must have happened on Mondays, when the groceries were delivered. In our tiny Suffolk village back then, almost no one had a car, so the (one and only) general store owner would bring the weekly groceries to us – having been given a list written in a bright red cashbook the Saturday before.

First, there was a general excitement with the various coloured packages that I would help my mother put away – some perhaps in the pantry, and others in the big sideboard at the other end of the combined kitchen/living room.