Heading home

This old plate hangs on our kitchen wall, near our ancient Aga. That is an original old cream Aga, and it is coming up for 60 years old next year. The plate is even older.

I have no idea of its exact age. It was already an old piece of china when I had it as my regular dinner plate when I was a young child, growing up in South London in the 1950s. I remember my mother telling me that I ate my lunch on it the day of the Queen's coronation, although I was too small to recall it.

My parents have long gone, and the plate hasn't been in daily use for many years. But I look at it daily, as I pass its place on the wall just inside the kitchen door through to the hall. It is a treasured piece of family memorabilia, a link to those I loved, now gone.

It is also rather a pretty, if quaint, picture of a time long past in rural England. Even its scratches tell a story, of eagerly eaten meals of childhood, a long time ago.