Barrow was badly bombed in WWII and, during one raid, Nella Last describes the effects on her house at 9 Ilkley Road as the windows are blown out, walls crack, and doors are splintered off. As she lies in her Morrison shelter in the dining room (many people used them as dining tables, as above), she experiences "calm acceptance of 'the end'", but also feels regret that she had "not opened a tin of fruit salad for tea - and now it was too late!" Something to consider as we are advised to stock up, as she did, on tinned food. 

Nella Last, like so many women in Barrow, spends a great deal of wartime queuing and shopping for food. One 'points' week in April 1943 she succeeds in finding herring, which prompts a comparison with the vast pre-war offering which her family enjoyed four to five times a week. 'Barrow people have always been big fish-eaters', she says, in the days when the fish came from nearby Fleetwood and kippers from the Isle of Man, and 'our lovely plaice, fluke, shrimps and shellfish from our own Morecambe Bay'. Evelyn Dunbar's The Queue at the Fish Shop (1944, IWM) could be set in Barrow itself.

With the advice from the government for households "to take a few simple steps to stay prepared if everyday services are temporarily disrupted" and to keep a "small supply of non-perishable food and bottled water at home", wartime cookery books and diaries still offer useful ideas for meals in difficult times. Nella Last (1889-1968, pictured here with her son Cliff), the prolific Mass Observation diarist who lived in Barrow-in Furness, details her many clever ways with rationed and scarce foodstuffs and, in her edited diaries, we marvel at her ingenuity and dedication to feeding her family.

As David Kynaston points out in his marvellous book, Deep into the Sixties, the mid-60s saw the arrival of the hot drinks vending machine, the 'retreat of the tea trolley', the 'erosion of the fixed tea break', and the sad loss of the vital, all-knowing office tea lady. Although she was not yet quite extinct; the writer of the Post remembers with fondness the tea lady and her fixed, twice-daily timetable in the Courtaulds plc offices in Coventry in the 1980s.

While tea-drinking can be shared and sociable, we cannot overlook the pleasures of a solitary cup of tea, perhaps with a good book or radio programme. Lady in a Blue Cardigan with Blue Hyacinths (n.d., Thoresby Courtyard) by Marie Louise Roosevelt Pierrepoint (1889-1984) is also a reminder that prepared hyacinths for forcing indoors are now in the shops. 

A nicely laid table and special china are not essential at tea-time, as it is the moment of respite and refreshment which is most important. Nevertheless, the still lifes painted by Anne Redpath (1895-1965) which include tea things, do remind the viewer of how lovely they can be. Pictured is Cups and Saucers (1949, Brighton & Hove Museums), and there is a whole collection of her colourful paintings of objects and flowers on the Art UK website.