Off to a cheeky start.

Hello there. My name is Maud Mortimer and I am new to this 'internet' lark. I have been told by Raymond, Mrs. Colchester's son who is a lawyer, to keep a public record of all the doings of the shop, what with recent events, and apparently this 'blog' effort is a good way. Whether it will stand up in court is quite another thing, but I'm doing it anyway. I'll give a bit of background, as I'm sure none of this will make sense any other way, but there we are. I am the proprietor of Miss Mortimer's Tea Rooms, a quiet establishment in a little village in Lancashire. We serve traditional fayre, despite the wranglings of those blasted Americans the other day, insisting on a cappucino. I told them we don't serve cappucino, we serve tea and coffee. "That's what I'm talking about," he said in his Maryland accent and badly fitting denim, "give me a cap." "We don't sell 'caps'," I said, "you need to go to Emmets', the sport's shop for a cap." "Look lady," and he wagged a finger in such a rude way... but I digress. We serve tea, coffee, occasional fruit juices and baked goods, scones, cake and the like. I bake everything freshly on the premises and all tea is served in china, with the correct number of accoutrements; tea pot, cup and saucer, milk jug, tea strainer, sugar bowl and tongs, silver spoon. I don't tell Mrs. Greenwood that the spoons are silver as she would have them away quicker than I could say Jack Robinson, what with her saving up for a cruise. Anyway, I have been here for twenty seven years and have had a very succesful time of it, until now. Unfortunately, our village has been usurped by...a corporation. A very large hotel has been built on top of us; literally, as I have a bedroom on top of me now, number 83. The Mimosa suite, apparently. I'm not sure what a 'mimosa' is exactly, but I don't want it on top of me. Anyway, the hotel have bought the whole village! I have to pay my rent to a hotel! Can you credit it? And the manager was in this morning, telling me he'll have to see our menu to make sure we don't compete with anything they do. "I don't do caps," I said. "I thought you were a tea shop, not a milliners." They're getting cheeky. So there we are. The beginning of the end, Mr. Chesterton said. We'll have to see.