I can't understand why people will take their treasured possessions and hide them away in cupboards and drawers where only dust and woodworm enjoy their beauty.
Homo sapiens have a peculiar twist in their make-up that compels them to hoard everything not required for immediate use. Squirrels and magpies have the same compulsion and I refuse to be put in the same class, having neither a bushy tail or a big beak.
The same attitude exists in the mentality of some of my neighbours who strive to attain perfection in their gardens and lawns. Especially the lawns. They feed them with chemicals, sand is sifted over through a fine sieve, and watered immediately it stops raining, which ain't often in our climate. Any weed rash enough to poke it's head above ground level is ruthlessly exterminated and all blades are cut to exact size and ordered to stand to attention or else!
But they never sit on it to have a picnic and should any of their kids set foot on the hallowed turf, instant thumps on the earhole are swiftly dealt out, as what do they think that notice, which is the only object allowed on the grass, is put there for? This always reads "Keep off the grass".
Now whats the use of it if you ain't going to use it? This annoys me intensely. Whats the good of a tail to a dog if he can't wag it?
When my parents were married, my mothers employers gave her a reference stating that she could cook good plain meals, was of a clean disposition, and had been to church twice every Sunday during her service with them. What they did not say was a) that she had worked some 15 hours a day doing this, b) that carbolic soap, which they supplied, certainly cleanses as it nearly takes your skin off and c) this was a condition of her employment. Anyway she couldn't afford to go anywhere else on the £5 per annum reward she got for these trifling efforts.
But what they did give her, perhaps as a sop to their conscience for enslaving a young girl for so many years, was a very nice tea set, beautifully designed, and complete with milk jug and bread and butter dish. This was a most prized possession in a working-class home where tin mugs were the rule rather than the exception.
Throughout my parents life the old squirrel habit persisted, in this case the tea set being the nuts, hidden away in a sideboard where it remained in spite of all my pleas to fetch it out when I wanted to impress my girlfriend when she came to tea.
Can you understand it? The winkles that we always had for tea on Sunday would have looked almost appetising laid on that lovely china. Not that I like them much, by the time you've dug them out and torn off their little black hats you've lost interest and you wish you had a plate of cockles. Think of the gastronomic joy in tilting one of those delicate plates and sipping the vinegar. Would have tasted like nectar.
Still, it was used, with due reverence, when we were married.
After my parents died I did the usual clearing up and when we had got used to the idea of living without them, my wife and I were unanimous in our determination to enjoy the full beauty of our tea set by using it. This was what is was made for and for what my mother slaved all those years.
We washed it clean of the dust of hoarding and put it carefully in our sideboard, after all, you can't put a set like that in a kitchen dresser, can you?
My mum and dad have been gone now for fifteen years* and that is exactly the length of time the tea set has been in our sideboard. We haven't used it all that much, in fact we ain't used it at all. I'm not having a lovely thing like that desecrated with jam butties and cream doughnuts. Woolworth's stuff is good enough for them. You've got to take care of the few heirlooms you've got, haven't you?
Notes:
* dating this piece to 1973
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