BORN WITH A SILVER SPOON FIRMLY CLENCHED IN THE MOUTH
- 8/2/2010 <--Prev : Next-->
Remember those caricatures of burglars in the Enid Blyton books ? The ones with the burglar making off with a sackful of silver candlesticks and silver soup tureens ?
What a daft fellow he must have been. Pity the poor robber who breaks into our house and makes off with the silverware, doesn't' he know what a chore silverware is ? IT HAS TO BE POLISHED !!!
How sad I feel for Aunty Jane, her better half, Philly Macdee must have won dozens of silver beer tankards and tea sets, poor Jane must spend all day polishing them !! There are only so many you can give away for wedding presents these days.
Do you remember when we all went through the stage of giving and getting silver objets for Christening gifts ? Teensy little engraved silver bracelets and brooches for the girls, beer tankards and silver hip flasks for the boys, silver photo albums. Eeek if I see another silver photo album when I am a grandma (?) when all photos are kept on disc at any rate these days.
Of course there are different categories of silver, some tarnish more quickly than others, I have found that if i keep my silver in a cabinet it does not go black as quickly as those treasured pieces that are on the side board.
Silver is after all a walk down memory lane so one is reluctant to part with it. That silver tea set was given to Uncle George when he was Minister of Mines and lived in that dinky little paper house on Gaika Mine Hill.
We have some wonderful precious little objects d'art like an ivory and silver baton inscribed "Presented to the Conductress Mrs Maggie Edwards- Hardy by the Machen Ladies" Choir January 24 1908" .
This is a treasured heirloom of inestimable value but it has to be polished. We have an intricately carved hat pin, a superb filigree crochet hook, tiny elaborately engraved thistles to hold salt, thimbles that would only fit Thumbelina..... we could set a table and entertain HM The Queen with aplomb but we never use any of these ornate treasures ever !!
One would need a butler, a between stairs maid, and a footman to clean all this stuff if one used it at a dinner party !!
Well getting back to the modern robber, all he is interested in is forex, cell phones and lap tops !! He would not be seen dead carting away the seven kg candlesticks Aunty Millie got for her fiftieth year with the Bombay Women's' Institute !!
We do have some celebrated ancestry I must modestly confess, Ministers, Mayors, Consuls, Ambassadors, and they all received silver salvers, samovars and asparagus dishes, and they all bequeathed them to me !! Obviously none of the other members of the family wanted them !!
I keep on watching that Antique Roadshow BBC Prime where they value antiques. in the hope that I might have inherited some thousand pound treasure. I have endless books on antiques that I plough through, e-bay is my nemesis but to date I have found nothing of value except for those Toby Jugs that I never dare dust in case I break them !!
Oh well, I can get even with the kids one day when I die and leave them all these glorious artifacts to them for them to clean !!
