My mum was born in 1925 and at that time her family were in lodgings in Winchester; they did not stay there long, maybe a couple of years; her sister born eighteen months previously was also born there. As far as I know our family have no other connection with the beautiful city; however, somehow my grandfather managed to arrange for her to be Christened in Winchester Cathedral. She was Christened in 1926 and one her gifts from a god-parent (name unknown) was a silver spoon with her initials engraved on the handle.
I remember the spoon at home from when we were little, it was so pretty and unusual and was usually in the sugar bowl. Then… somehow it got lost. I don’t remember it being lost… maybe my mum didn’t either, maybe it was just a realisation that her Christening spoon wasn’t in either the cutlery drawer or the sugar bowl. Several years later, my dad was in the garden; we had a large garden – well, it belonged to the lady who lived in the flat above ours but she was elderly and let us use it and my dad grew all our vegetables.
On this particular day dad strode back down the garden from the vegetable beds, triumphant… and in his hand was the Christening spoon! It must have got bundled up with potato peelings or cabbage leaves and put on the compost heap! The spoon was returned.
I ended up with the spoon, and every time I used it I was reminded of my mum, of the losing of the spoon and the finding, of my grandfather who arranged the Christening in Winchester cathedral, of my dad digging the garden and growing vegetables for us. And then one day, I realised I hadn’t seen the spoon for a while; I searched everywhere, the drawers in the kitchen, the sideboard in the dining room… and I realised that sadly, the spoon must have disappeared in the way it had in my childhood. I had a vague hope that it might turn up when we were digging our compost into our vegetable beds, but in reality I guessed it had gone out with the other rubbish, and was lost forever except in my memory.
So… yesterday, in preparation for our family returning home from University, and with the prospect of a summer full of big people in our house, we decided to do some deep tidying… I think you can guess the rest!
Lois Elsden 
nice post 🙂 ………beautiful spoon
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A place for everything and everything in it’s place comes to mind!
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Simples! It’s a magical spoon that deliberately disappears when people get too complacent and take individual family members for granted. So everyone can take stock and count their blessings, the spoon disappears and then reappears before sadness sets in. Thanks for this lovely post, and yes, it’s a lovely spoon. Reminds me of Welsh lovespoons, although they are obviously made from wood and carved.
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Of course it is! You’re so clever and absolutely right! It’s a magic spoon!
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I’m still trying to fathom why single socks disappear from our washing machines. What’s that all about? We fail to appreciate technology? Surely not. Maybe they sneak off during the wash as a reminder to be more frugal and remember that we used to darn socks rather than throw them away.
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There must be a secret sock land don’t you think? Unless the boggart likes wearing a different sock on each foot – you know about the boggart, don’t you?
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Yes I do. That’s a good piece of detective work, Lois. Boggarts with a fashion sense…the mind boggles.
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There must be a story for you here!
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Hm, aimed at readers 4 to 7 it might work. Now where’s my pen and paper…?
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