Today’s words: cheer, champagne, tuxedo

You wouldn’t say Miss Gladys Allslop was the cheeriest person around, but she was a woman who liked to do things right.

She ran the oddly named “Cheery Self Café” and believed there was a manner in which a café should be run. This was especially so when she considered that her clients were from the top end of town and therefore demanded, at least in her eyes, a certain level of service and decorum.

It was a costly business going into her café for a cup of tea and a jam scone. Many scorned her café as pretentious and over priced. It was felt it wouldn’t last, as people would not frequent her establishment when down the road you could get the same cup of tea and a scone for a fraction of the price.

You could buy lunch, always served with genuine French Champagne, none of your pretend Sparkling Wines, and with a menu, she had developed with her chef husband, Jean.

It was the only café around with a dress code, and she insisted men wore a tuxedo even if it was for a humble cup of tea.

It was an unusual sight to wander by in the middle of the day and see so many seated in her café all dressed to the nines sipping their champagne and eating spatchcock in lemon-lime sauce.

In time it became a novelty to go to dinner there, the suit hire firm in the High Street doing a roaring trade in suit hire and people started to have formal nights at the café just for the fun of dressing up.

Written for: https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/11/21/daily-writing-challenge-nov-21/