SPOON & MAGGI

Bett was everything. An amateur herbalist, she’d forage the hedgerows for leaves and serve up her concoctions with such assurance that you were cured even before you’d taken a single sip. She was a haberdasher, selling everything from angora to rickrack in the local village of Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire. She dabbled in antiques, seeing beauty in unloved pieces that other people would have relegated to the rubbish tip. She was a fastidious home maker, polishing every surface until it threw back her determined reflection. She gave this ‘Honeymoon’ spoon to her daughter-in-law Maggi in the first few years of her marriage. Maggi and Bett’s relationship was founded more on respect than warmth but they grew closer even after Maggi’s marriage to Bett’s son ended. Bett developed a fondness for Maggi’s new husband Brian. Maggi still uses the spoon – but just to take eggs out of boiling water, as Brian says ‘it’s no good for soup’.

11 Aug 2013