This is definitely a.....

.....Sign of the times.  A long story short....we ran out of tea bags so had to resort to loose tea.  I couldn't find the 'silver' scoop, only the brass one!  It went on one of my 'lists' and this morning I found it.  Unfortunately I didn't think to take a photo of the before....totally black...but this is the after!  It is definitely as 'sign' of the times that I no longer clean the silver regularly as I used to back in the 70's, 80's....etc.etc.  I've put a close up of the handle design in extras & I think it's a very pretty object.