Saturday 3 August 2013

turning the table..

Those auspicious moments keep rollin' in...

When we first married and moved into our first home together, (as the saying goes) we 'didn't have two ha'pennies to rub together'.

No TV, no car, second hand furniture, a coal fire. And no table to eat on. How we relied on dad. He rewired the house, helped put in the kitchen units he'd found cheaply and was an all round star.

He'd acquired a large, round, formica table top which we screwed to the base of mum and dads old kitchen table and voila - our table for decades to come.

It moved house with us, was used for work, never marked by hot dishes, great for board games, it was used for children's colouring and underneath it I sat with the children as bossy infant Sarah made David and me cups of tea from her tiny teapot at five in the morning.

But, in the end it gave up, No longer able to be screwed onto the rickety legs it became unstable. There had to be co-operation between diners as undue pressure on one side of the table caused the whole thing to tip towards you. It was like eating on a rough channel crossing.

So, one day we took the plunge and bought ourselves a new table. Completely rash move, far too expensive for folks of our simple tastes. But our new 'Skovby' Danish table arrived. And it was dead good. It didn't cockle over. And when you rotated it, it expanded to seat eight. Gosh. the land of milk and honey...

And then, in the twinkling of an eye, our lives changed and we began the Cordwood adventure and our table had to be packed into storage where it sat for almost two and a half years.
the family anticipate the arrival of the meal on our old table

And two weeks ago, it survived a flood when the monsoon rains caused a huge wave of muddy water to pour down from the building plot above and flooded the annex. Fortunately, our few possessions - including our table - were stored on pallets and the flood waters didn't quite reach.

And then, we brought Skovby out of the annex and sited her in her new dining room as her adventure comes to an end.

What better way of celebrating than with a glass of Dave's 'Elderflower Champagne', chilled in our own fridge?!

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