Cake Plates

Lychees after lunch....

My sister and I are the first customers in the cafe. We are really waiting for the Antiques Emporium to open. We sit on a low couch with two pots of mint tea on the wooden table in front of us. We are missing our big sister as we are writing lists, planning meals, making arrangements for when our nieces, her daughters, come to visit soon - one from Beirut with her own beautiful four month old daughter who we will meet for the first time, and her younger sister recently returned from Nepal.....bringing their youth and freshness and new experiences into the dregs of our Devon winter.

Later, in the Emporium, I find a set of seven Spode cake plates, fluted gold edged, patterned with an outer circle of fleur de lys, in a terracotta colour, which I buy. My stack of little white Limoges plates, which we bought from a shop, spilling out onto the pavement in Paris, are all gone except for two. So these new but old plates, holding someone else’s memories, are interrupting the white theme of my china cupboard. Good to introduce small changes....in not scary places. I will use them every day.

But maybe I’ll use them for the first time when my nieces come  - as I know they are especially fond of cake.  And  especially as I’m now the owner of some very elegant cake forks too....