There are those that encourage you and those who piss on you from a great height.
Not that I need any encouragement with my need for crockery, but I do have to fend off the old gits’ irritation with yet another cup and saucer.
I am not a collector but I do have a dresser.
Furniture is nothing unless it’s used. Is a table still a table when it’s empty of candlesticks and fruit bowls? Does an empty piece of wood with four legs constitute being a table at all. A table is only a table if its used as a table.
I bought a dresser from Mrs.B. We were on the second floor she the top. We were moving, she was selling. The old pine dresser has two drawers and three shelves. A simple affair that cost us £250 in the early 80’s. I’m told its worth much more
It would have been worth much much more than more had the idiot who fixed our boiler hadn’t sawn a great big hole ih the wood to put pipes through.
The dresser stands in the kitchen next to a wall. If a dresser doesn’t have hanging delights then can it still be deemed a dresser?
When I sit and look at the assortment of shite on the hooks and shelves I can provide a story for each item.
On the very top shelf, only reached to by a ladder, there are Belgian beer glasses balanced in wooden holders. They are the canaries in the mine. When they stop glistening it’s time to clean and polish the whole shebang. Next to the glasses, from a shoot in Gwent, are three ceramic pieces. One. a fake Ming vase from a fancy friend from drama school. One a pot with fake jewels from my dead sister-in-law. And a Chinese vase with a pipe in it.
When we moved here I had two Feng Shui masters come and tell me about the lay of the land.
‘Take the piranha off the mantle piece. It’s the wealth area and the fish is gobbling up all your assets.’
I got rid of the stuffed fish, it’s sharp little teeth chattering as I threw it in the bin.
The Chinese vase is to help the energetic flow in the cottage, Two more pipes and vases are
sitting on the window sill next to the telly.`That’s how fucked up this little cottage was.
On the second shelf stand three golden, wooden angels from my mother, and two antique brass and wooden candlesticks.
The hanging mugs are an assortment of presents. A big mug with the twelve days of Christmas painted all the way round, from the nephew. Shiny blue and gold mugs from the homeopath. Two green cups from my now dead friend in Devon and a ‘War of the Wealds’ mug from my local neighbour.
One shelf down and there’s a big glass jug with two handles our names engraved in it for our wedding. Silver spoons that the old git bought when he was working in Sweden. Little Swedish musicians playing musical instruments, the dawters birth details engraved in them.
A packet of sweeties that are a joke. They are colourful chewies disguised as contraceptives for Mother Mary. A clockwork windmill from a chum in Dartington and a bottle of different coloured sands from Allum Bay in the The Isle of Wight. In honour of my brothers first holiday.
Some of the mugs that hang are a white ‘B’, a ‘Queen Bee’ and a giant mug with bee’s on the side. My dawter is named B.
On the last shelf are the saucers to all my cups. I don’t drink out of mugs, the lip is too thick. Bone china for me. I have teacups in a stack of other tea cups. A white Wedgewood porcelain cup bought by my mother, it’s chipped so I bought another but haven’t got rid of my mothers gift. She held it after all.
A designer mug from Gabriel’s wharf from when I was at LWT. It’s a ceramic masterpiece with a fish and two tadpoles in bold relief on the side. Another mug fell onto the old one so I tracked down the Artist who fashioned me a new one. I’ve kept his letter written in artistic scribble.
The homeopath bought us more coffee cups with lots of hearts decorating it. There’s a sculpture of me in marzipan on the end of the shelf made by Andrew Nutter, the Northern chef, she’s gathering dust but has a great bosom with a birthmark on the left breast, taken from real life.
On the main part of the dresser there are two cake stands. To the left is the ‘oosbinds with rubber bands, screws, egg cups, old Rennies and a lightbulb.
On the right is mine. A proper Wedgewood gifted to me by one of B’s ex boyfriends. It has propped up business cards from tree surgeons to Parish councillors. Also on my cake stand are rubbers and pencil sharpeners, a lipstick and tooth floss.
There’s a very old lamp in font of more hanging cups. When people come visiting I get them to choose their drinking vessel. Interesting when I guess their choice correctly..
Two mugs from Café Landtmann, a Viennese caff, where Sigmund Freud frequented. We bought them whilst filming for The BBC. Two ‘The Morning on One.’ cups with gold embossed rims.
Another little coffee set with a tiny Steiff Elmar Teddy Bear stuffed into it. It’s worth a fortune. Ridiculous, And a scrubbing brush of a recling lady, given to me by a Canadian friend all the way from Canadia.
Propped up aginst her bristles are badges from Fifty years ago. ‘Rock against Racism’ and ‘Belt and Braces’ and some barbed wire and rock from the Berlin Wall.
There are three pots of pens and my newest acquisition a set of oval platters from ‘Hospice in the Weald’ as shiny as a spring day in Alfriston.
‘We dont need them’ croaked the retired actor.
‘I dont need them’ I retorted. ‘I want them’,
Dame Sylve from Chatham always encourages, perhaps she’s as bad as me, she’s always on the look our for pretty plates. The old git, on the other hand, dribbles his dislike of my dresser dressing.
‘We do not need another forty two fine bone china cups’ he complained as he laid the table.
We had people for tea. Into the charity shop I popped and came out with 6 cups, 6 saucers and 6 plates with hand painted flowers on the side.
We sat in the garden round a circular table, with napkins, and scones, and butter and cream and strawberry jam and homemade cucumber sandwiches which I managed to make look like a long distant lorry driver had made them whilst wearing chain mail mittens.
Those cups and saucers made a tea party worthy of a garden in East Sussex.
There’s nowt wrong with drinking out of mugs, but I don’t. I won’t drink out of pottery made in black either. I need a tiny white cup, with hot fragrant tea. No milk no sugar just the smell of Darjeeling on a warm spring morning at the foot of the Himalayas.
Who’d have thought a cuppa could do that?