I dreamed I was in St Mary Abbot’s church after my brother’s christening. There was a tea party in the church with people standing about holding cups of tea. I was given a large plate – I needed both hands to carry it – and told to hand it round to everyone. The plate was covered by small rectangular sponge cakes with white icing, each one decorated with a crystallized violet. I longed for one, but was told I must wait until everyone had been offered the plate. Some people refused and I began to hope that there would be one left for me, but when I approached a large lady with a brown fur round her neck, she smiled kindly and took the last cake. The disappointment still pricked my eyes when I woke up. I must have been between two and a half and three years old when I dreamed this, and it must have been the time when my parents moved from the first-floor flat in Clanricarde Gardens to a small house in Bedford Gardens, also in Kensington. I have no memory of the flat, but we stayed in Bedford Gardens until I was six or seven so I can remember some small pieces from those years.
