Perhaps it was the two dogs in this picture that prompted me, about a dozen years ago, to say to my mother “Mum, I’m not going to buy you anything else that I wouldn’t want back eventually”. It would have been more than thirty years ago that I bought her these Balinese carvings from a friend of Jessica who shipped them over here., along with the reindeer whose story is told in “Surprise”, from a friend of Jessica who shipped them over here. These artefacts were very in vogue at the time. I knew Mum would like them. I don’t. They remained on either side of her fireplace until she moved to Woodpecker’s Care Home.
It had long been her custom to stick a label beneath each of her store of ornaments and other treasures indicating whoever had given them to her and consequently to whom they should pass at her death. There has been a limit to what she has been able to to take with her to Woodpeckers so she and Elizabeth have begun decanting them now.
I have quite forgotten donating many of these gifts, some of which were given with Vivien who died in 1965. I suspect the ceramic basket is one of those.
The copper bowl and ceramic vase both bear the name of Jessica who died in 2007.
The glowing, perfectly fitting, treen container was bought with Jackie at Chichester’s Christmas market c2011.
Apparently my daughter, Louisa, bought the china dish, and I bought the Royal Grafton thimble.
This collection was brought over by Elizabeth yesterday. It is the first batch of my share of the presents of a lifetime.
This evening we dined on succulent roast pork; sage and onion stuffing; crisp roast potatoes; firm carrots and cauliflower; tender runner beans, and meaty gravy, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Repasse de Montagne 2019.