A very special Birthday Party

Over one hundred people gathered at Torre Abbey for a traditional afternoon tea yesterday (June 9) to celebrate the Queen's Birthday. Felice, a German student who has been working with TTPL this week, has written a fantastic blog on the busy day! 

Let’s be honest, what better reason is there to throw an amazing traditional tea party than the 90^th birthday of  none other than Queen Elizabeth herself?

For this week’s student meeting TTPL members planned the celebration of this special event. Being part of the preparation team for the party, I can tell you that arranging all the bits and bobs for this day has been a once in a lifetime experience by itself.

On Thursday morning the team met up at Torre Abbey, which is a stunning historic building in Torquay surrounded by beautiful gardens. The weather was a bit foggy and grey, but nevertheless we decided to assemble the party equipment outdoors, embracing the optimistic thought that even if it had started raining, that would’ve just set the mood for a perfect British event. In the end I think we were all glad that it didn’t rain throughout the whole day.

There was a lot of work to be done, including preparing sandwiches and ‘cream tea’, blowing up balloons and decorating the whole place. Nobody could answer my question about the reason for cutting the crusts off the bread to create the perfect sandwich and cutting a hundred sandwiches didn’t help, but it tasted pretty good in the end. Listening to the English National Anthem and traditional music made the whole process even more special and authentic. It got a bit hectic in the end, but we managed to have everything settled in time and when the clock struck two and the other students arrived the real fun began.

The students enjoyed the variety of English cakes next to the typical ‘cuppa tea’ and there was even a small gift given to everyone, which is always exciting. I saw some people around me taking Instagram pictures, which I can totally understand, given the ideal photo opportunities. For those people who couldn’t get enough pictures taken, there was a little set up of silly hats and masks of Queen Elizabeth and Philip and a Union jack covered picture frame. I’m not too sure if the royal couple would be flattered seeing some of the pictures taken by students that day, but they would certainly be amused… and we were, too.

It is always nice to see the other students at these weekly meetings and to have the opportunity to chat about everyone’s work placements, experiences and plans for the next weeks. TTPL Queen’s Birthday party was a particularly successful and unique gathering and the amount of work and time put in the preparations were totally worth it.