As my Mum used to tell us on many occasions, “The world is your lobster!”
She may have been a bit shaky on her crustaceans but she was spot on, on the subject of living life.

For many months we have been talking around the subject of what is to be our next adventure. We have contemplated a simple house-move, or, maybe, the purchase of a motorhome to tour around the United Kingdom. We have even considered starting up another small business together.

It was this line of thought that had us leaving Essex early on Saturday morning en route for Devon to view a tearoom that had taken our eye.

Before setting off on such a journey it was clear that we needed to discuss whether and how we might run such an establishment and we had spent many a long evening discussing roles and responsibilities, business plans and expectations.
We spent time considering what our USP (unique selling proposition) might be in this field of endeavour. Clearly our current work would stand us in very good stead. For me this involves delivering food to the elderly and confused who often quiz me about what day of the week it is? Why am I delivering lunch when they had just eaten it? Do they usually like chicken?
Libby’s work involves providing Jagerbombs to the supporters of Fanny the famous (in her own mind) local drag act. She calls them her ‘Fanny Club’. She also helps members of the Fanny Club who have become ‘over happy’ to find their way to their transportation to the next watering hole.

I will not bore you with the fine detail of this planning but to put it into a recognisable shorthand let me just say that Libby will be assuming the role of Mary Berry, the scone and cake queen of the North Devon Coast whilst I would be more of the Basil Fawlty, The Curmudgeonly Crumpeteer of the organisation. Libby would work her magic in the kitchen whilst I would try not to antagonise the customers too much with my usual array of sparkling repartee and wit – a role that, some say, I have always been meant to play.

We had asked the Estate Agent to book us in for a viewing late afternoon on Saturday, to give us time to recover from the five-hour drive and to take a closer look at the local area, or midday Sunday, so that we could set off home later that day. In the time honoured tradition of Estate Agents (who rank just above politicians and journalists in my list of least respected professions) we were offered the opposite – noon on Saturday and 4.30pm on Sunday. Out of pure bloody mindedness we accepted the Saturday lunchtime appointment and set out bleary eyed after a late night shift early on Saturday to meet our destiny.

We completed the trip without incident and arrived at our picturesque Devon cove with time to spare. Our first impressions were of a town that was slightly tired and had lost some of its sparkle. A strong coffee later we concluded that the tiredness and lack of sparkle was ours, not the town’s, and a couple of shots of caffeine later we were looking forward to the viewing with renewed excitement.

Our entry into ‘Sally’s Tearoom’ was both good and bad in equal measure.
The good element was the establishment itself which was clean, quaint and welcoming AND bustling – which was everything we could have hoped for. We liked the whole feel of the establishment.
Less good was the fact that we were instantly recognised as the potential buyers by the current owner. Sally and I exchanged knowing glances – I instinctively knew that we were the last people on earth that she would want to sell her business to, and she knew that I knew that we were about to go through a ritualised viewing with no end product. After perfunctory handshakes I suggested that, perhaps, we should start in the garden tearoom at the back and work our way forward? Sally disagreed and led us to the kitchen where she introduced us to a freezer (I recognised it almost at once), an oven (I was all over that right away) and a four-minute dishwasher. Now a four-minute dishwasher sounded like something that I should make admiring noises over, so I did.
“You’ll be amazed how long four minutes is when you are in a hurry!” Sally advised me in an attempt to cool my ardour.
“You don’t have to tell me that,” I replied, “Roger Bannister removed my tonsils when I was a kid!” The connection was lost on Sally.
However, we were permitted to be impressed by the scone oven, where all of the goodies for the cream teas were baked on site. Although, at busy times, a larger capacity oven would have been a better choice, apparently. Again, we were required to temper our enthusiasm out of fear that we might want to take ownership of what we were looking at.
From the kitchen we were taken to the toilet – not literally which was just as well as my IBS was having a field day at this stage and accompanied visits would have caused embarrassment to all concerned. The solitary toilet was snug to say the least. Anyone with aspirations to swing a cat was clearly in the wrong convenience.
A cursory glance around the interior of the tearoom and Sally considered that we were now ready for the garden. She was probably wrong!
The view up the garden with its array of climbing plants, all in flower, and its secluded seating areas was idyllic. The climb up the North Face of the Eiger to get to it was less so!
Hearts pounding, we reached the summit, arriving at a table that did not appear to have seen any ‘high tea’ action for a while. And who can blame the genteel ladies of a certain age who went out for lunch in comfortable shoes and headscarves, not climbing boots and abseiling ropes. The descent, with the dual impediments of a false knee and a replacement hip, was scary to say the least – and this was on a dry and warm day. The prospects in rain and frost doesn’t bear thinking about.
The two- bedroom apartment above the business was adequate as a starting point for a relocation but the narrow lane in which the building sat, whilst quaint for a business could soon create claustrophobia as an owner-occupier business, I think. The furnishings were tired and clearly well used. In normal circumstances this would not have presented a problem. As I often scream at the TV screen, when watching Escape to the Country “You are buying the house, not the ruddy furniture!”. However, these were not normal circumstances because the lane in which the tearoom was located was so narrow that I could not envisage how a furniture removal van could make its way to the property, let alone could we get furniture up the tiny stairway to the flat. I suspect that Sally had reached the same conclusion and settled to retain the previous owners’ furniture.
At this point Sally felt that she had fulfilled her responsibilities as a vendor, and with a dismissive ‘farewell’ she departed without even the traditional handshake and sycophancy that usual accompanies the potential sale of her livelihood.

We remained anxious to give this tearoom every opportunity to win our hearts and decided to stay for coffee and a sandwich. It was time well spent.
Claire, our waitress, had recognised us as possibly her new employers and made sure that these sandwiches were gigantic with crisps and salad enough for a meal in its own right. She was more than happy to extol the virtues of Sally’s Tearoom and its customers.
She had started work at the tearoom under the previous owners and loved the job – mainly because she only lived up the hill and her daughter only went to school around the corner. Oh, and she could choose her own hours, so she never worked on a Sunday, or in most of the school holidays.

The two sweet old dears at the table next to us put the situation in perspective when they told Claire “We love it when you serve us. You give us crisps and everything! That Jackie gives us nothing – not even a smile! Face like a slapped backside, she’s got!”
Note to self: don’t re-employ Jackie.

On paying the bill we asked why there were no disabled facilities available. The young girl explained that she only works on Saturdays. Presumably this means that the disabled are banned from the premises on a Saturday!
Note to self: don’t re-employ Saturday girl

Our positive disposition led us to take time to find solutions to the potential problems we envisaged – how to get the rubbish bins down from the hillside that formed the garden and to somewhere wide enough to accept a dustcart; how to get our furniture into this tiny establishment; how to get people to step away from the bright and breezy views of the quayside to enter the lane behind to visit the tearoom; how to engage Sally in such a way that she might consider us to be serious buyers.

The search for solutions goes on!