October 2025: A Tea Party with the man in the moon

Tea Party (noun)

1. A semi-formal afternoon social gathering at which tea, sandwiches and cakes are served. 

2. A type of imaginative playing in which children gather with each other or their dolls to mimic having a real tea party or other formal meal, often without any food at all.

Dust-off the cotton sheet that keeps your old imaginary friend tucked away in the attic, and tell me about the stories they read to you when you believed the entire world was sleeping. Tell me about the dream you wrote down in a fearful fever of forgetting. Tell me about the man in the moon, your childhood dog in rhyme and rhythm, and the picture books with the illustrations that made you believe that imagination was not an illusion, but something that was simply too tangible to touch. A relic of sorts, perhaps–like an aviator’s plane crash-landed in the Saharah desert, or a wardrobe that once led to a lamp-post. It’s not pareidolia if it’s really there, now is it?

Bring your imagination on a porcelain saucer, and tell me a tale.

With silver bells and cockle shells,

Emmanuelle Kate.