Momento Mori

Ever since I have known her, Her Indoors has been collecting little bits and pieces, trinkets and pebbles from holidays, sea-shells from far-away beaches, photos of loved ones, etc. and placing them in trays or bowls to contain them, so that they gather dust and are almost impossible to clean without major upheaval. I have to say that I have contributed to these dust-traps too, and the photos show an example of just a few that sit around our compact but adorable, town-house apartment here in Bath.

The hand-bag shaped pot you can see in the top left was actually made by a doctor friend of ours. He is head of Pain Management at the local hospital, though he has done little to alleviate mine over the years, I have to say. Let's hope I don't/do meet him if ever I go up there.

Beneath the shell is a little saucer of sand and shells which we stole from a beach in Crete, along with a dead battery and a brass screw (for some reason). Elsewhere, we have a plastic cup full of sand from a beach in the north of Cuba. We managed to steal some real-estate as we left.

Every year, H.I. decides that we must have walnuts at Christmas, and we always seem to have most of them left over the following year. The main tray contains all sorts of junk, but you can see a photo-booth snap of me and my beloved girlie grand daughter, with a pebble discreetly obscuring our identifiable features. The clay pipe comes from a pub called 'The Grey Goose', which has Civil War reenactments every summer. I bought it from an old man who thought it was the real thing.

The main feature is a fragment from a plate which I made for Her Indoors, featuring a rat character who is an old friend of ours. I was washing the plate one day, when it slipped from my fingers and smashed to bits. I saved the fragment shown, and turned it into a Momento Mori item in the old tradition. It now forms part of the archeological heritage of our compact but adorable, town-centre apartment.

This post should really be in my 'Life Style' section, but I have promised to only do that at weekends, and I couldn't wait. I am currently sitting at home on anti-biotics, waiting for my face to assume as normal proportions as possible, and dreading a visit to my doctor friend to sample some of the more powerful wares from his cupboard before they do unspeakable things to my teeth...