Love In Lockdown

From Facebook archives

6 November 2020

What a lovely surprise.

Up here blogging and Fester says "There's a parcel!" so rush downstairs before the postman has a chance to put the dreaded card through the door.

It's a cardboard cube covered in brown claggy tape.

When I get in I find some of HenFfrind’s beautiful paper sculpture work with chocolates, teabags and biscuits and a handmade card saying "just something small to make up for not being able to meet at half term."

Rhoddwn i bron a llefain.

Diolch

Mrs Quilt  Now you need to post an image of the paper sculpture.  What a thoughtful and talented friend. (A translation for those of us who started school in English Monmouthshire before we were allowed finally to be from Welsh Gwent, please)

Mrs Jeremy  How lovely to get such a well thought out gift through the post.

8 November 2020  The beautiful little paper teapot and card made by HenFfrind to make up for not being able to get together at half term.  Photographed on the mantlepiece with the brass Welsh ladies bells and turtles to give scale.

☕☕☕

Looking at that photograph it strikes me that some people might be interested in the history behind of the items on it.

For my twentyfirst birthday HenFfrind presented me with a wonderful china elephant, who now sits miraculously intact on top of the dresser; since then elephants have been the motif of many of our cards and gifts to each other.

The brass turtles used to sit on the grate of Fester’s mother’s fireplace; I call them Vesta and Tilly as I suspect they were originally for holding matches.

Whenever I see a brass Welsh lady bell languishing in a local charity shop I bring her home with me; sadly most of them were made in Birmingham.

The ceramic Mumbles Welsh lady was my Granma’s and originally had an egg-timer stuck in her left arm.

The other knitting lady was an eighteenth birthday gift from a schoolmate I didn’t particularly like; somehow she prophesised my life motifs of cats and knitting.  It has a key and when wound up it up it plays Lara’s Theme from Dr Zhivago. 

The wooden clock covered by the card sat on Granma’s mantelpiece and has a wonderfully loud tick.

The wooden fish letter rack used to sit on the mantelpiece at home and was a gift to my Dad (a keen angler) from Middlesister; she kindly let me have it.