We finally got to doing something for Whitney's birthday, having been delayed by illness - she chose to go to afternoon tea at an absurdly posh hotel in the centre of the city.

I had thought I had a fair idea of what it would be like, but I hadn't been prepared for the level of sheer unabashed loadedness on display - this is one of those hotels where there are huge glass cabinets in the lobby showing watches, silver-studded boots, ballgowns and other miscellaneously expensive things just to show off how incredibly rich they are. In the tea room upstairs, we were attended to by floppy-haired waiters who were programmed to answer every request or acknowledgment with "my pleasure", accompanied in the background by a solo violinist playing a role that in the rest of the world had died with the invention of the portable radio.

In some sort of failure of national genetics, I don't even like tea, but to test whether I had grown into it yet I tried some vanilla Earl Grey. (I have the dreadful feeling that this photo may become more legendary than I had intended if the people I know in real life ever get hold of it.) It wasn't bad, exactly, but not a taste that I really enjoyed - I found myself adding things to it so that when it reached my satisfaction it was basically just sugary milk with a couple of leaves in it.

Tea was accompanied by a savoury and then a sweet course, both arranged naturally in little towers. The first was made up of decorative things that were allegedly sandwiches but bore no resemblance to any definition of the word that I'd encountered before - perfect squares of bread, topped with coast-to-coast layers of egg, cucumber, prosciutto or salmon, with the top left off and decorated with a rosette made out of cream and an olive or a tomato or something instead. After that we were given three tiers of little cakes and chocolate-coated strawberries with surely indigestible gold lettering printed on them.

It is a ridiculous amount to spend on lunch, but it feels sort of enjoyable faking that all of this is somehow normal instead of utterly absurd - and it's an experience worth trying. I shall be waiting here in my birdcage for you.