TEA OVER LONDON

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 120, 16 November 1929, Page 11

TEA OVER LONDON

WOMEN'S NEW PASTIME

"Mr. Jones requests the company of Air. and Mrs. Smith for tea over London on Friday afternoon. A car will beavailable to take you to Oroydon aerodrome." An invitation such as this from hosts who wish to give their guests a novel experience is becoming a common occurrence, writes a special correspondent of the London "Daily Mail." Every Friday and Saturday a threeengined Armstrong Siddeley air liner, carrying twenty passengers, cruises gently over London, and women sit in armchairs, as comfortably as in their own drawing-rooms, and have their tea served on board. ' For- £2 2s there is tea, forty minutes'! flying, and a motor : car. to take you to and from the aerodrome. A party recently consisted of men and women with an average age of at least forty. There were three women of more than sixty. _ ' . "Excuse me, have you flown before?" I asked one of them. . "Never," was the reply. "I want to see- what it is like." . ' * Cruising at 75 miles an hour at 3000 feet we hardly seemed to be moving. As though approaching the bull's-eye we left behind the outer ring of greenery, passed the ring of bright red houses, skirted the .puce-coloured -buildings of Thornton Heath, a 1 reached the. dark grey houses of the southern- side of the river, and so to London's light ffrey centre. . - Westminster Abbey and ;the Houses of Parliament looked like a dainty piece of grey china work; the Thames, with its tiny boats, like a tiny stream. In wonderful pattern of curves and squares the houses and buildings lay spread below, between them the lighter grey of the roads. Cars looked like ants omnibuses and tramway cars like beetles, and human things were invisible. It was like a city of mechanical life. Not one of those making a first flight regretted it. Bather were they all the more determined to fly in future. We will go again next Week," one of the elderly women remarked as she straightened her.hat and climbed into tne waiting car. • '"..- Tea over London looks like beeominff an institution. '.