Fox Tray

Bloke goes up to a bar and orders five pints of bitter, a gin and tonic, a scotch, and a bag of pork scratchings.  Barman asks ‘Would you like a tray?’.  Bloke answers ‘Don’t you think I’ve got enough to carry?’.
Can you give an old joke a home?  For just £24 a month, you could keep Radio 4 Extra going and so ensure that jokes like that are preserved for the nation, whether the nation wants them or not.  For more information, see Barry Cryer.
That joke is so old that there are remarks about it being old written in hieroglyphics.  Old, and true.
Because nobody should operate a tray without being trained in the art first.  By trained I mean nobody should try to use a tray who is not a character in a P. G. Wodehouse story or a drunk uncle who does a rendition of ‘Mule Train!’ that is astonishing in its capacity to shock, delight and put the poor drunk bastard in A&E with a concussion every Boxing Day.  For the unwary, the untrained or those without sufficient upper body strength, the tray is simply a way to drop a lot of things more efficiently.
One should never have to transport more than two cups of tea at any one time unless you are a paid employee or, to give them their politically correct term, skivvy.
The tray itself though is something of a social marvel.
At one end of the social spectrum, say Downton Abbey, the tray itself is made of silver and is worth more than the vicar's virtue, and that's before it's loaded up with enough booze to make the conversation at the dinner table of an English country house bearable to anyone who thinks that 'tying one's own flies' is a simple precaution to prevent unintended. chapout.
Then there is the Formica tray, that has done service in many a home for many a decade.  In more civilised times, the tray would be beringed with the evidence if a million cuppas safely transported from kitchen to front room.  In these less enlightened times, the tray is a personal dining table, allowing each family member to enjoy their evening meal not in the company of each other, but bathed in the gentle light of the idiot lantern.
Let us not forget either the plastic tray, black or red, always slightly damp, picked up at one end of a self serve counter and loaded with sandwiches and beverages before being used to assault the cashier who thinks it's OK to charge you £7.99 for a BLT and a coke.
And let's not forget coke and, in that act, take a moment to reflect the makeshift tray, that flat object that can be used to transport stuff from hither to yon and, when fashioned from something black and shiny, is ideal for serving stimulants.
My new acquisition is far from an impromptu tray, although it is stimulating.  It is, in short, magnificent.  Who can fail to be thrilled by a proper tin tray featuring a country house scene with a couple of foxes frolicking in the foreground.  Who?  As a the owl, also pictured, might ask.
It's a tray that tells a story.  What is happening in the house?  Is there a party, is there a tray within a tray in use?  Or is there bad business afoot, is the daughter of the house being forbidden from marrying her true love, a humble woodcutter, albeit one who has had his woodcuts exhibited at the Tate Modern.  And what of the foxes?  What role do they play in this drama.  Is it Evelyn Waugh, or M R James territory that we're in?  All of these questions and more occurred to me as I saw this object for the first time, but perhaps the most pertinent was 'are you going to buy that tray or just look at it some more?', as posed by the shopkeeper.
I think it's charming.  I am also convinced the house pictured is the one from 'The Mousetrap', which would explain why the tray is just the right size to serve up a book and a cuppa, or a revolver.