Not a TAAT, but one here, along with an article by Jay Rayner, talking about kitchen items that hold meaning way beyond their intrinsic value made me think.
I have a wooden spoon. It's a corner spoon, made of a different wood to modern day ones and is smaller than any other corner spoon I've seen. It's the perfect size, weight and balance for everything. It's also tatty, scorched in places and rough. Out of every single tool, implement and thing-for-stirring we own, I reach for it every time.
This spoon was my Granddad's. Every time I stir porridge, scramble eggs, use it to splat butter into a pan, I'm holding something my Grandfather touched when cooking in his warm kitchen, where I would sit in the armchair by the range as he calmly moved around from the larder to the dresser to get plates to place them on the warming rack.
I don't have photographs, he's been gone for 36 years, but as soon as I pick up that spoon, not only does it feel as though it's an extension of my arm, I'm back in the clean, warm kitchen of the home that smelled of beeswax and coal, horse liniment, brasso, paraffin lamps and carbolic soap in winter, Sweetpeas and Honeysuckle in summer.
I've thrown away (or shoved into the jar at the back of the hob) other wooden spoons for far lesser offences than being knackered and tatty. But DP knows Granddad's Spoon is the one I'm asking for when I say 'could you pass me a spoon, please?' He knows it doesn't get left in a cold sink of dirty water. He knows it is The Spoon by which all other spoons are judged and found wanting.
It's completely illogical, but every time I scramble an egg or look out of the kitchen window, I'm connecting to that little, gentle man who dealt with me as though I was a slightly skittish colt. He didn't do much talking and was deaf as a post (particularly when he turned his hearing aids off so he could hear my mother telling him off again and that he should get rid of all that old rubbish and get a nice gas fire and a big fridge freezer put in), but he was a master of communicating through movements, gestures and a flicker of his bright eyes, blue as the Forget-Me-Nots growing in abundance along the front path. To silently put my hand where his once held mine so I could help stir dinner means so much.
When I cook with that wooden spoon, he's holding my hand again.
What are your 'worthless' treasures if you have any?
Do you have mundane, unimportant items that mean an entire world to you?
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40 replies
MitziK · 16/05/2020 12:50
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