Tetleys or Typhoo?: 2012

These are two classic tea towels which, along with a tray that I also bought, are part of an advertising campaign for tea (mainly tea bags).  I loved the campaign, the characters (do you remember Sidney?), the strap lines; they have been around a long time.  Yet, initially, I’m blowed if I could remember if the campaign was for Tetleys or Typhoo teas.  I have asked a couple of friends who both say that they remember the campaign but neither  could pinpoint the tea.  Does that mean that it was a poor advertising campaign? Or is there a subliminal message that ensures that when you are in a supermarket you will go to the correct product?  Actually I just needed to get my brain in gear, get my memory to work properly: Tetleys Makes Teabags Make Tea.  Who can forget that? Not me. So there is the answer to the question at the top of the page.

Believe it or not, in 2012, Portmeirion Village, in North Wales, was another tea towel lover’s paradise.  Not only was there ‘The Prisoner’ shop with its tea towels; there was the Portmeirion Pottery outlets and all their tea towels (I didn’t buy any of those because I already had several); and there were the independent shops which had a whole range of tea towels.  With my ‘Prisoner’ tea towel already in my bag, I wasn’t looking for another tea towel.  However, then I saw these two; I loved the cartoon characters, I loved the colours – blue on white and white on blue, I loved the quotes, but couldn’t decide which one I preferred so I took the easy way out and bought both.

I am unashamedly a tea drinker; never touch coffee, never touch alcohol.  I like all sorts of tea, different tea for different occasions and different moods.  The results of the Referendum certainly required a strong Ceylon or Kenyan tea.  However, I hate tea bags with a passion: it doesn’t matter whether tea bags are round, square or triangular or made of paper, silk or nylon, so there is an irony that I bought two tea towels which are mainly about tea bags.

I needed to ask Mr Google for a bit of help with the background to the Tetley advertising campaign: the characters on my two tea towels are known, along with many others, as the Tetley Tea Folk, animated characters used to advertise Tetley Tea from 1973 to 2001 and then from 2010 to the present day.  Over 30 million Tea Folk items have been sold and Tetley Tea Folk items can be found in over 5 million Britsh homes (and one of them is mine!!).  I love these tea towels, they make me smile and I’d like to say “How about a nice brew?” – loose leaf, of course.

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https://virtualteatowelmuseum.com/2017/05/14/the-promotional-collection/

Baked Beans: 2014

I had completely forgotten that I had bought a ‘pair’ of tea towels at Robert Dyas in Brunswick Shopping Centre in London, back in 2014.  One half of the ‘pair’ was Tomato Ketchup which I blogged about on 10/5/16; if I had remembered I had the other half of the ‘pair’, Baked Beans, I would have done a joint blog.  Too late now.  I now remember that the ‘pair’, tied together by a cardboard wrapper, was a bargain.  I rarely buy two tea towels together like that; but I do like Tomato Ketchup (Heinz, of course) and I do like Baked Beans (again, only Heinz and not with those little sausages in the same tin).  It was a good pairing and a good buy.

Of late, unless I am just eating plain old baked beans on toast, I do like my baked beans served in small ramekin dishes so that the tomato sauce doesn’t spread over everything else on my plate.  One does get fussy in one’s old age.  I like this tea towel but it is the brief failure of my memory that means this is a separate blog rather than a joint one with Tomato Ketchup.  Ah well.  That’s the way the cookie crumbles.

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The Gardens and Kitchens Collection

Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum: 2006

It is fortunate that my tea towel from Wimbledon came to the top of the airing cupboard pile at this time, since Wimbledon Fortnight started yesterday.  This is the first year, now that I have retired, that I have had the luxury of being able to watch as much tennis as I want, whole matches starting at noon rather than coming home from work and having to watch the highlights.

Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum opened in April 2006 and several months later I visited it.  If you look at the tea towel I bought there, what is familiar?  The colour scheme?  What does it remind you of?  The colours of the Suffragette Movement?  Exactly.  The purple, green and white are the colours adopted by the All England Lawn Tennis Club in 1909; prior to that date the colours were blue, yellow, red and green.  In 1909, it was discovered that those colours were identical to that of the Royal Marines.  No one really knows why purple, green and white were chosen as replacements but possibly because the militant Wimbledon Suffragette movement adopted them in 1908.  Bit radical. The museum holds artefacts relating to tennis and croquet dating back to 1555 and a considerable amount of more up to date memorabilia.  I have to say that it was fascinating and beautifully laid out in ‘those’ colours.  The tea room was perhaps a little disappointing but maybe it has improved in its first ten years of being opened.

I have actually been to Wimbledon Fortnight several times, when I was much younger, when there was no roof on the Centre Court, when Henman Hill and Murray Mound was just a bit of a slope, before there were Big Screen TVs, when Serena Williams and Roger Federer weren’t even twinkles in the eyes of their parents, before there was a Wimbledon Museum and when Rod Laver was still ranked the Number I tennis player in the world!!  My Aunty Shirley was a member of the Wendover Tennis Club; she was able to get Centre Court tickets through her club and took me for a day out.  I can’t remember who we watched (but it wasn’t Rod Laver) but I do remember it was a bright sunny day, no stoppage for rain and that we took our own sandwiches, staying all day until the last match was over.  I also remember that the seats were very hard and we needed to take our own cushions; I hope they have replaced those seats by now!  I was very excited about being able to go to Wimbledon, and especially to go with my aunt who was always great fun.  Thinking about it, I must have gone on either the Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of the second week because it wasn’t semi-finals day and the first week would still have been the school term and my mother would never have allowed me to skip a days schooling.

I remember going again a couple of years later, queueing for tickets on the outer courts, with Rory.  In the first week, the outer courts gave you the chance to see some very good players; I was never patient enough to queue for tickets for the Centre Court to see the really big matches.  One of the things about Wimbledon was always the atmosphere, the milling crowds, listening to people talking about the matches they had seen, sharing anecdotes and showing the autographs they had collected.  Fortunately, as someone who could be tempted to collect everything, and anything, I am not a collector of autographs so I didn’t have to spend my time worrying about whose autograph to go for.  It was another day for taking our own sandwiches and cushions.

As I grew older, and after I moved out of London, I was satisfied just to watch Wimbledon on the TV.  But in 2006 I was tempted back, just for the Museum.  Wimbledon, more recently, has taken on a more poignant twinge for me.  Last year I wrote a ‘page’ about Dorothy and David who celebrated their 60th Wedding Anniversary; they were both tennis players and are huge Wimbledon fans.  Wimbledon Fortnight is sacrosanct; you didn’t ring them during that period, visiting was out; they were glued to the television.  Liz and I decided to buy them two bone china mugs from the Wimbledon Museum shop.  They loved them.  When I watched them use the mugs, it always reminds me of the sunny days I spent at Wimbledon (unless it is raining and I remember Cliff Richard singing ‘Summer Holiday’ from the Centre Court stands!).

When David had a very serious stroke last year, Liz bought him a Wimbledon ‘exercise’ ball, again from the Wimbledon Museum shop, to help with his physiotherapy in the hope that just the thought of Wimbledon would inspire him to get greater movement in his hand.

Since I went to Wimbledon in 1960s, technology has taken over.  I now have the App which takes me round the whole of Wimbledon, into the Trophy Room, in preparation for the coming fortnight.  It is great fun and something that Liz has shared with her Dad.  While wiping up, this tea towel will always hold many memories for me – some happy, some poignant and some sad but that’s what memories are about, the whole gamut of emotions.  Let’s hope Andy Murray wins Wimbledon and I can add that to this tea towel’s memories.

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https://virtualteatowelmuseum.com/2017/05/14/the-promotional-collection/

The Royal Family at Sandringham: 2016

I bought this tea towel earlier this year when I stayed at Sandringham (the Caravan Site not the House).  The shop at Sandringham House is a tea towel lover’s paradise: tea towels of the Royal Family, tea towels to celebrate Royal events like the christening of Princess Charlotte or the Queen’s 90th birthday, tea towels of Sandringham House plus a huge selection of more generic tea towels from Ulster Weavers.  They were all good quality, sturdy, colourful and definitely with a good absorbancy rate.  Someone had to tie my hands up to stop me from buying them all.  I had to make a careful choice about what I was going to buy.  It was Jai’s birthday the following week, and she wanted a tea towel, which gave me an excuse to buy at least one.  Since Jai is going to inherit all my tea towels, I am reassured she thinks it unrealistic to wait for a new tea towel until that day comes.  OK so I bought two for her; why buy one when you could buy two?  I forgot to photograph them so I can’t blog about them by proxy.  And then I bought a few others, all linked with Sandringham.

I love a Family Tree.  Maybe that is because I am hopeless at trying to work out my own; there are too many unanswered questions and too many inter generational mix-ups that puts everything out of kilter.  People shouldn’t marry several times or get married to much younger women; it confuses the issue.  My Uncle Chris is roughly the same age as me, so my cousins appear to be of a different generation.  Anyway, back to the tea towel which shows the Royal Family Tree with the direct line to the throne; anything more and they wouldn’t get it all on a tea towel.

Whenever I start talking about Family Trees with my friends, we always get into conversations about what the difference is between ‘First Cousins Once Removed’ and ‘Second Cousins’.  Then  we get into some amazing ‘theories’ which no one understands or can remember the following day.  This actually became the ‘burning question of the day’ today when Liz’s niece had a baby in the early hours.  What is the relationship of Liz’s daughter, and her children, to the new baby?  This is where a tea towel comes in handy.  I look at the tea towel and pinpoint the relevant relationships; in this case it would first be ‘What is the relationship between Prince William and Zara Tindall?’ Answer: cousins.  Next is ‘What is the relationship between Zara Tindall and Prince George?’  Answer: First Cousin Once Removed.  Last question ‘What is the relationship between Mia Tindall (Zara Tindall’s daughter but not on this Family Tree because she is not in direct line to the throne) and Prince George?’  Answer: Second Cousin. So that means Liz’s daughter is the First Cousin Once Removed to the new baby and her daughter’s children are Second Cousins.  Simples.  The answers relate to which genereation you belong to which explains why it is always slightly more complicated with my family because the Family Tree is a bit ‘wonky’.

So a tea towel can offer a nice clear analogy to those tricky questions (and also a solution to a selection of possible Pub Quiz questions).  The reality is that I will use this tea towel and remember the birth of Liz’s Great Niece, after a very short labour (lucky woman), remember that I have solved the longstanding dilemma of what the difference is between a First Cousin Once Removed and a Second Cousin; I will think of that great holiday in Sandringham and not think about the financial and political crisis that we face in Britain over the next few months (and maybe years).

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The Royal Collection

Mary Queen of Scots: 2001

I write all my tea towel blogs initially by hand, as a draft, before committing them to the computer.  It’s the only way in which I can get my thoughts straight.  I had a draft of this one completed several days ago but I just couldn’t bring myself to publish it; my thoughts were in disarray. That’s what a Referendum does for you.  I am one of those people who believe, fundamentally, that you have to understand your history in order to understand where you are now and how to move forward.  From my childhood, through my teens and into adulthood, I have always loved a history book – from ‘1066 and All That’, to history text books, to biographies and even historical novels.  Whoever thought it was a good idea to take history out of the compulsory curriculum after the age of 14 was absolutely crazy.  This is how we find ourselves in the mess we are in today.  We all have to understand where migration, immigration, religion, political parties and allegiances, territories, democracy and so forth originate and fit into our society; it’s not a straightforward story and goes back centuries.

If you ask me who my favourite historical character is, the answer would be Mary Queen of Scots.  I bought this tea towel in Linlithgow, where Mary Queen of Scots was born in December 1542.  It is a simple tea towel, good quality cotton, something to enjoy doing the wiping up with.  I like the picture of Mary, that dominates the centre but also the fact that she is surrounded by the Four Mary’s (not the Four Mary’s from the Bunty comic of 1960s) which I will come to later.  So why is she my favourite historical character?  It’s difficult to say: it isn’t because she achieved great things, or reigned for a long time, or because she brought unity to Scotland or because she had a charmed and happy life: quite the opposite in fact.  Mary Queen of Scots was a controversial figure; she was either loved or hated by history.  Was she a pawn in the hands of powerful people?  Was she badly advised?  Was she complicit in the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley?  Did she plot to replace Elizabeth I?  Was she betrayed by Elizabeth I?  I’m not a historian; I don’t know the answers but I do think she had to cope with more than anyone should be expected to.  She was a central figure in a very political world: the longstanding enmity between England and Scotland; the fragility of the Tudor crown and the line of succession; England’s longstanding rivalry with France and Spain; and finally, the religious upheaval, in both England and Scotland, between Catholics and Protestants.  There are shades of the familiar here.

Six days after Mary Queen of Scots was born, her father died and she became Queen of Scotland, a Stewart; Regents were appointed.  Almost immediately, Henry VIII of England negotiated an agreement that Mary would become betrothed to his only son, Edward; this would mean that, once the marriage took place, when they both came of age, England and Scotland would become united into one nation, led by a Protestant king.  However, this was a ‘political’ move which came to nothing because the Scottish barons had other ideas and at the age of six, Mary Queen of Scots was sent to France to live in the French court with a view that when she became of age she would marry Prince Francis, heir to the throne of France.  Here come the Four Mary’s.  Mary Beaton, Mary Seton, Mary Fleming and Mary Livingstone were of a similar age, grew up with the young queen and were sent to accompany her in France.  In fact, they stayed with her throughout her life, as life-long companions and great friends.  The story goes that Mary enjoyed her life in France, was great friends with Prince Francis and by the time they married in 1558, at the age of 16, she had fallen in love with him.  Sadly, not long after their marriage, Francis became King and two years later he died.  Here was a very tall (5 feet 11 inches was very tall for a woman in those days), beautiful, talented woman who fell in love with a short and not particularly attractive man.  Mary was truly distraught at his death.  France had given Mary Queen of Scots a thorough education: she was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, Latin and Greek; she played the lute and virginals, wrote poetry and prose; she was a horsewoman and falconer and exceptionally good at embrodiery, sewing and tapestry.  There is hardly a National Trust property in England or Scotland where there isn’t a piece of tapestry or embrodiery completed by Mary.

On the death of Francis, Mary Queen of Scots returned to Scotland, in 1561, to take up her crown.  Scotland, although ruled by the Stewarts who were Catholics, was in fact mainly Protestant because John Knox was leading a reform of the church.  One of the things I really liked about Mary was, despite the prevailing mood that nations were either Protestant or Catholic, Mary wanted to work with the Protestants, not ‘convert’ the country, and exist peacefully alongside each other.  She was criticised, and ranted against, by John Knox.  For both the Protestants and Catholics it had to be one thing or another, no compromise.  Mary was under a lot of pressure to marry in order to produce an heir; she rejected all advice and married Lord Darnley, a cousin, in 1565.  This was not a happy marriage and while pregnant her favourite musician and confidante was murdered in front of her; it was thought this was a plot by her husband  to cause her to miscarry.  She didn’t and gave birth to her son in 1566.  In 1567, she was forced to abdicate in favour of her son because of the issue of religion.  At this point she was still only 25; and had reigned for six years.  During her reign she had travelled extensively across the country.  Around the tea towel are some of the places she had visited; the quote on the tea towel “God Bless that sweet face” is attributed to crowds cheering her when she, and the Four Mary’s attended parliament in 1563.  This was counterbalanced by John Knox saying “Such a stinking pride of women…..was never before seen in Scotland”.

Eventually, Mary was forced to take refuge in England.  She did this without seeking ‘safe passage’ from Elizabeth I who saw fit to put her under ‘house arrest’ for nineteen years, moving her from castle to country house, from fortress to stately home, living in comfortable circumstances but without freedom.  There were very few places she stayed, or people she stayed with, that did not like her, and feel she was wrongly done to.  While Elizabeth never met Mary, she always felt that Mary was a threat to her crown and eventually, in 1587, she was executed in Fotheringay Castle.  The irony of all this is that Mary’s son was the rightful heir to the English throne, because Elizabeth had no children, and became James I of England and James VI of Scotland, a Protestant King.

This, for me, is why Mary Queen of Scots is so important and so intriguing.  If you really want to understand where we are today, you do have to understand our history and a lot of it has its roots around this episode in history – the tension between Catholics and Protestants; “Sports clubs are a focal point for religious communities……Sectarianism in Glasgow is visible in the rivalry between the supporters of Glasgow’s main two football clubs, Celtic and Rangers”.  If you listen to the Proclaimers song ‘Which school do you go to?’  it is about if you know the school someone attends you can find out all you want to know about them – their religion, which football team they support, their ancestry, their political affiliations, their attitude towards Scottish Nationalism and so forth.

If you think about the Scottish Independence Referendum, Mary Queen of Scots is where the issue started, the unification of England and Scotland under her son.  That is why history is so important and every time I look at this tea towel I think that it is very sad that the religious tolerance that Mary proposed was so vehemently turned down but I like to think that, although this was a woman who lead a horrendous life, most people who met her, loved her.  She may have been badly advised and misunderstood but her life provides a great story to liven up the wiping up.

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The Royal Collection

 

“I am not a Number”: 2012

“I am not a Number. I am a person” said Number 6.  This is a quote, one of hundreds, from the cult UK TV series of The Prisoner.  The Prisoner was a series which ran from 1967-68, over 17 episodes; it was created by, and starred, Patrick McGoohan.    This was a controversial series, controversial in terms of the fact that many people had no idea what it was about but many others were absolute devotees.  Basically, McGoohan played a Government agent who resigned, without explanation, from his job and was immediately drugged and kidnapped from his London home; he awakes in a strange village where he is only known by a number, Number 6.  Everyone in the village, both prisoners and captors have a number which means no one can distinguish between captor and prisoner; no one knows who to trust, or rely on.  The whole series was about trying to establish why Number 6 resigned: was he going to defect? Was he going to share secrets?  For nearly 40 years, people have tried to interpret this series, hence its cult following; there are websites given to interpreting each episode and others with iconic quotes from all the episodes, for example:

Number 2: “Are you going to run?”                                                                                         Number 6: “Like blazes.  First chance I get”                                                                       Number 2: “I meant…run for office”  or  “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.  My life is my own”.

While people I know used to hide behind the sofa when watching Dr Who, I used to think that The Prisoner was boring and pretentious, probably because I never understood it.  Give me the Sound of Music, a story with a happy ending.  You could never say that about The Prisoner and I didn’t even understand the ending.  I just thought it was scary and creepy.  You would never describe it as ‘light’ entertainment.

I bought this tea towel from the village of Portmeirion, in north Wales, because the ‘village’ in the series was filmed there (although the programme never stated where the village was; in each episode there was an implication that the village was in a different country each time).  Within Portmeirion there was a small shop dedicated to The Prisoner; I couldn’t resist this tea towel.  I love the black and white; I love the square with the quote and the one with the penny farthing.  If you are not a fan of The Prisoner, you may wonder why there is a penny farthing, what was the meaning of it.  McGoohan described it as an “ironic symbol of progress”.  That sums up The Prisoner for me!!  I might not like The Prisoner but I just haven’t got another tea towel like this; you can’t deny that it is iconic.

The Prisoner has been described as “the relentless attempt to be free from the tie-downs of society and to retain one’s own identity in a vast sea of peer pressure”; this would be by the fans of the show.  I think that it is more akin to the The Emperor’s New Clothes; loads of people love the programme but I bet an equal number have no idea what it was about.  When I do the washing up with this tea towel, I will have a wry smile because I don’t have to be talked into liking The Prisoner, and it’s OK to think that it was a pretentious load of twaddle because I am ‘an individual, not a number’ but I will remember  (a) never to watch a repeat of the series (b) a lovely day out in the village of Portmeirion and finally (c) an iconic tea towel that joined my collection.

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The People Collection

Southend Pier: 2016

I was in Southend on the day of the Referendum on Europe.  This tea towel will certainly remind me of a day I regard as devastating but the decision we made, as a country, can’t take away from a great day out.  So why was I in Southend?  The reason is inextricably linked with tea towels!  Last year, my friend Helen bought me a tea towel of Clevedon Pier; I blogged about this tea towel on 12 April 2016.  Almost as soon as I posted it on Twitter, it was picked up by the East London Group.  They were interested in who the artist was that designed the tea towel; I was able to find this out.  The tea towel was based on a photograph  by Bristol photographer, Clive Minnitt.  I wasn’t familiar with the East London Group at this point, so I wasn’t sure why they were so interested in this tea towel.  I do know now.

The East London Group had organised an art exhibition at Southend Museum, an exhibition of the work of the East London Group of artists who were at their peak in the 1920s and 1930s; it was a group of artists led by John Cooper.  Most of the work of the East London Group of artists was about the urban landscape, especially in London.  However, a lot of their work was about the countryside and coastline.  This exhibition, from 19 March to 25 June 2016, was called ‘Out of the City’, exhibiting those works.  The East London Group used Twitter to publicise the exhibition, on a daily basis, to post photographs of some of the paintings on display  and to open a discussion, and inform people, about the wider work of the East London Group.  This can be one of the important things about social media; it can introduce someone like me, someone who knows nothing about the East London Group, to a whole new world.  I became fascinated by this group of artists and loved a lot of their paintings and wanted to see more.  I really ‘got into’ the paintings of Walter and Harold Steggles and was determined that I should go and see the exhibition.  You know how it is, you get these ideas and then other things take over and get in the way.  However, I knew the last day of the exhibition was 25 June 2016 and I was unlikely to see this work elsewhere, many of the pieces of work are held in private collections.  It was now or never, so off to Southend I went.  Not only was this the day of the Referendum which meant I was queueing at the Polling Booth at 7am before I left but it was forecast to be a day of  heavy rain, thunderstorms, lightening and flash floods.  I can always pick a good day for an adventure but the weather couldn’t be another excuse because I would always regret missing the exhibition.

I loved the exhibition; it was even better than I imagined.  Often in exhibitions there are only a few, but well displayed, paintings.  Not so here; there were a large number of paintings, a wide variety of artists, different sizes of paintings plus a number of artefacts associated with the paintings – artists sketch pads and notebooks, letters, all giving provenance to the works.  I spent a long time there but, of course, there wasn’t a tea towel although a lot of the paintings would have made a good tea towel.

However, if you have never been to Southend, Southend, as Billy Bragg will tell you in his song “A13 Trunk Road to the Sea”, is at the end of the A13 or A127 with nothing beyond except Shoeburyness so I needed to plan something for my day out in Southend, to make a proper day out.  Southend is a very traditional seaside town.  There is a cliff lift, built in 1912.  I would have travelled on it but it wasn’t working.  But I did want to go to Southend Pier.  When I looked at Southend Pier, I now realised why the East London Group were interested in the Clevedon Pier tea towel; the look of the pier, the wrought iron work, the Victorian lamps are all so similar.  Southend Pier is the longest pleasure pier in the world, standing at 1.3 miles (or 2158 metres).  It has a railway line along the length of the pier to take visitors along, except, of course, it wasn’t working when I was there.  That made it a long hike.  The rain had held off; it was calm and still, cloudy but muggy, a good day for a walk.  I hadn’t thought this through.  I am not keen on heights and what I hadn’t taken into account was that the wooden planks ran length-ways and there were gaps between the planks so you could see the water below.  This was something that I definitely wasn’t keen on.  I freaked.  I couldn’t walk forward but neither could I turn around and go back.  Don’t look down.  Don’t look down.  One foot forward.  Take a steady pace.  Keep going.  Once I started it was ok and I really enjoyed walking on the pier.  I liked the fact that there were a lot of seats along the way and covered benches which might prove useful in the event of a predicted downpour.  I like the posts which told me when it was one-third of a mile, two-thirds, one mile.  It made me feel the end was nigh.  At the end was a nice little cafe where I was able to have a Lemon Ice, refreshing me for the return journey.  It was the place to sit and watch the world go by, the boats sail by, others walking the length of the pier.  I was slightly disappointed that the Crazy Golf course was not open; the end of Southend Pier would be a great place to play Crazy Golf.

I braced myself for the walk back; the clouds looked dark grey but still no rain.  I was confident I could get back before the rain started.  As I strolled along a ‘golf buggy’ went past and I did think that I could have done with a lift in one of those; not to be.  A minute or two later, another ‘buggy’ came along; a mellifluous voice said “Can I give you a lift?”. My saviour, my guardian angel.  I leapt on the buggy before she changed her mind.  You get a completely different perspective of the view from the pier, moving along in a smooth buggy, probably a bit like travelling on the train.  At the end of the journey, I thanked my ‘rescuer’ profusely who said “Don’t thank me, he asked me to offer you a lift”; she was pointing at the first man in the buggy that passed me by.  He said he thought I might be struggling but couldn’t take passengers in his vehicle.  There are wonderful people about!!  I would have made it back but considerably slower and with a much worse back ache.  Thank you to my two guardian angels.  I loved Southend Pier; I loved Southend; I loved the East London Group exhibition and, of course, I love my tea towel.  As I use the tea towel, I will always remember this day, unfortunately it won’t just be for Southend but for the day Britain made one of the most significant decisions of its life.

The picture below is the poster for ‘Out of the City’ and is a painting of Canvey Island

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The England, Wales and Northern Ireland Collection

 

Lyme Regis, Dorset: 2000

I bought this tea towel on 1 January 2000.  Not a day that is easy to forget but a day on which I was surprised that any shop or tea room was open.  The Millenium was full of ‘hype’.  I worked in an organisation that ran a 24 hour Support Service for disabled people.  We offered good terms and conditions for our staff, on proper contracts but did not give enhanced hourly rates at weekends or Bank Holidays.  This was the first year that we had to increase the hourly rate for staff on New Years Eve, because other agencies were paying quadruple (or even higher) time over New Years Eve/New Years Day.  It was blown out of all proportion.  I spent the Millenium celebrations in a house with 20 other people in Charmouth.  This is probably not what I would normally chose to do but the Millenium was ‘special’; I didn’t want to be alone if the world of technology was going to grind to a halt.  Do you remember all those dire warnings about computers crashing and the business world falling apart?  Was the burglar alarm in the house going to work?  Were we going to be able to fill the car with petrol or pay by credit card?  This was the time to be with people if civilisation, as we knew it, was going to grind to a halt.

Fee booked the house; I don’t think there was any particular reason why Dorset was chosen as the area to go.  It was a random selection of people invited – some I knew very well, others I’d never met before and the rest fell in between.  If I remember correctly, we would all arrive on 30 December and leave on 2 January; I left late on New Years Day because of a hospital appointment the following day.  Most of the time, the idea was that we would ‘do our own thing’; on New Years Eve, however, there would be a big, formal, sit-down meal.  This was a meal we all had to contribute to, in some way, both in terms of food and time.  Tasks were allocated.    As a non-cook, this was something I dreaded; I tried to bargain washing up against doing any cooking.  Fee was unyielding and allocated Potato Salad to me, one of only two things my mother had taught me in the line of cookery (that and Pickled Onions).  I did it; it was ok but the problem is that I can’t remember what else was on the menu and why Potato Salad would go with it (I was obviously traumatised by the whole Potato Salad ‘thing’).

The house had been decorated by the owners for Christmas and it was amazing for this big celebration; the dining room provided a gracious setting for the meal.  I remember the evening went well and lots of photos were taken, although I don’t appear to have any.  I remember going to bed early, as soon as we had properly seen in the New Year.  I didn’t drink alcohol and I think the energy that came from alcohol meant others could last long into the night.  Probably the Millenium was the last time I celebrated New Year beyond midnight.

On New Years Day, I went to Lyme Regis, a cute little town not too far away, where I actually found a tea room (serving loose leaf tea) that was open and had a tea towel.  What a great way to start the new Millenium! This is a classic, tourist tea towel showing some of the highlights of the area in, and around, Lyme Regis.  Lyme Regis is part of the Jurassic Coastline, famous for its fossils that are easily collected from the beaches and cliffs.  The tea towel couldn’t be without ammonites and the Ichthyosaurus, the first complete fossilised creature to be discovered in the early 19th Century by Mary Anning.  The tea towel shows the Golden Cap, the cliff and hill that is the highest point on the south coast; the Umbrella Cottage, an early 19th century, Grade II listed building that was once a gardener’s cottage and most famously of all, The Cobb which is the harbour wall first written about by Jane Austen in ‘Persuasion’ and later by John Fowle in ‘French Lieutenant’s Woman’ (also filmed there).

Lyme Regis is one of those strange places where there is a lot to see, and happening, but is actually only a very small place with a population of less than 3600; it was in the Domesday Book and the Abbot of Sherbourne Abbey, in Saxon times, had salt-boiling rights on land adjacent to the River Lyme (I don’t think this is going to come up in a Pub Quiz).  Of course, you could argue that the tradition of Conger Cuddling is what makes Lyme Regis famous!!  This was where a dead conger eel was attached to a rope and nine people stand on flower pots, the conger eel is thrown at them, on the basis of ‘last man standing’.  This was a fundraising event for the RNLI described as “the most fun a person could have with a dead fish”. Unsurprisingly, this tradition was stopped in 2006, after a complaint, and the Conger Eel was then replaced by a buoy; they have since tried to introduce a rubber eel.  Sounds exciting!!

Actually, after the idea of Conger Cuddling, which isn’t on this tea towel, maybe I will just remember Lyme Regis as a great place to welcome in the new Millenium, thankful that the world didn’t shut down, rather than as a place to get swiped by a dead fish.  But it does bring a bit of sparkle to a drab day, wiping up.

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The England, Wales and Northern Ireland Collection

Calke Abbey, Derbyshire:1988 (possibly)

I was thinking, the other day, about what tea towels might be coming to the top of the airing cupboard pile in the near future; what tea towels haven’t I seen for a long time?How many more places can I have visited, where I bought a tea towel?  Then I remembered I hadn’t seen the Calke Abbey tea towel and I knew I had one.  A couple of weeks later it appeared.

Calke Abbey is owned by the National Trust and came into their possession in 1985, in lieu of death duties.  It came with all its attached land and on condition that the last remaining Harpur-Crewe, Henry, would be able to have an apartment within the Abbey until his death. Calke Abbey is, in my opinion, an excellent example of what the National Trust does best – making quirkey properties interesting and accessible, to as many people as possible.  When they took over Calke Abbey, the National Trust had a big challenge; here was a property that had been owned by the same family for over three hundred years, it was not a particularly interesting historical building but it had been untouched in terms of repairs, alterations or renovations since the 1880s, or dusting, come to that.  The Harpur-Crewe family were not socialites, they did not mix socially but were almost reclusives, with a definite leaning towards eccentricity.  They were collectors, or perhaps more accurately, hoarders.

Let’s get one thing straight, Calke Abbey is not a religious abbey but a fairly large, but nothing special, country house.  From the beginning, Calke Abbey was described as in a ‘state of decline’; there were some very serious structural problems.  A decision was made that this was going to be ‘preservation not restoration’; what this meant in practice was the first stage of work was that the house, and its contents, would be extensively photographed.  The second stage was for the contents to be carefully packed up in order that the structural work could be done and the final stage was for all the contents to be returned exactly as they were found, not tidied up, rubbish not disposed of.  Time should stand still; this is a reflection of a piece of social history.  If you have never been to Calke Abbey, you will not realise what an undertaking this was.  Therefore when Calke Abbey was finally opened to the public, it would be exactly as it was on the day it came into the National Trust possession, but safer.  This was a massive task and required a lot of money.  A Calke Abbey Fund was established and a plan for the most urgent work was made.  In addition to this, the National Trust decided to open the property a couple of times a year, before it was opened to the general public, only to National Trust members, at a charge and on timed tickets.  This was a brilliant idea because it captured the attention, and interest, of National Trust members, prompted donations for something in return (a sneak preview) and gave an insight into what taking on a property like this entailed.

The reason I am slightly uncertain as to the date of this tea towel is that John, Gwyn, Pete and I went to every Open Day during the years of repair and, as soon as the shop was open, it had a tea towel but I can’t remember if it was 1988 or 1989.  I love this tea towel; it is what I expect of the National Trust.  Designed by Lee Kay, she says it is one of her favourites for the National Trust and she still has all the original art work (How envious am I?).  When I look at the tea towel it shows the front elevation of the house as you drive up the very long drive, come round the corner at the top of a steep incline and there it is in the hollow.  Beautiful, majestic, more imposing from the outside than the inside but the tea towel gives you that feeling of a substantial property. At the bottom of the tea towel is the stable block which was used to show videos of the repair work.

The Harpur-Crewe family were undoubtedly collectors (of everything); if tourist tea towels had been around in the 18th and 19th centuries then this family would have been able to out-rival me.  So instead of collecting tea towels, they collected specimens of taxidermy – huge glass cages, in many rooms, of stuffed birds and animals, displayed in ‘rural’ settings, animals they had caught, shot or been given, some of which are quite rare.  They collected cartoons from Punch, and other satirical publications, which were used to paper the wall of a room.  They collected children’s toys – rocking horses, dolls, trains, teddy bears – and cribs, rocking chairs, not laid out but piled up in the nursery.  They collected paintings and china; if it didn’t move, they collected it.  I love a good collector, that has space to store things in and Calke Abbey is certainly big enough to do that.  What they weren’t good at was organising those things, and dusting.  In fact, one of the most amazing things in the house is now a Chinese silk bed; this is an exception to the approach the National Trust decided to take – it was found, still in its packaging from 1714.  It is now fully erected with its pristine colours, preserved by having stayed in its packaging for so long.   I remember when we first visited, this bed had not been discovered and on subsequent visits there were display boards which described the story of its discovery.

All the visits that the four of us made were a journey of discovery; each visit was different because we were seeing different parts of the building, as the National Trust worked their way through it.  The first visit was somewhat limited because the building was structurally unsound but gradually more bits were opened up, and other areas being worked on were closed while work was being carried out.  I really like stuffed birds and it was amazing to see them in situ on the first visit, boxed up on the second visit and back exactly where they were the first time we visited, on the third visit.

I remember that first visit we made; it brought John’s ‘blagging’ (as opposed to ‘blogging’) skills to the fore.  We hadn’t realised that  the tickets were so strictly timed when we booked them, separately; our timed visits were 5 hours apart.  John rang the National Trust and explained that Gwyn and Pete were “travelling some distance” so we could visit together and our tickets were at either end of the day.  It was a ‘slight exaggeration’ in that we live 10 minutes apart but the National Trust were very helpful and our tickets changed.  Thinking about it, I still feel slightly guilty but it is nearly 30 years ago and we weren’t ‘jumping the queue’, just rearranging it a bit.  After that, we bought our four tickets together at the same time.

Looking at the tea towel reminds me of how much I love Calke Abbey; this is where I learnt what a ‘ha-ha’ was; this is where the yellow silk chairs had been protected from fading because no one had opened the curtains; this is where I learnt about Ice Houses; this is where I watched the very gradual repair of the beautiful Orangery, which the National Trust couldn’t even afford to start until 1992; this is where we went for a three course meal under a marquee, as part of the fundraising, and where my book of Calke Abbey was signed by Henry Harpur-Crewe; this was where we watched the development of the Walled Garden over the years; this is where there was a tunnel from the house to the Ice House so that the servants fetching ice couldn’t be seen by the family.  St.  Giles Church, on the estate, is well worth walking to.  Star of the show is probably the portable shower!

Calke Abbey is very special to me because I am sure that if I owned a country house the size of Calke Abbey I would also collect indiscriminately; my tea towel, teapot, jug and China collections would be rampant.  I might even have a mate for Albert, my stuffed seagull.  Lee Kay said her tea towel was one of her favourites and it is this tea towel that reminds me that Calke Abbey is one of my favourite National Trust properties!!

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The National Trust Collection

Norwich: 2009

I was going to say that I was disappointed by this tea towel; but that is unfair, I am disappointed in my lack imagination in buying this tea towel.  For regular readers of this blog, they will have spotted that this Norwich tea towel is exactly the same overall  design as that of Cheltenham (blog dated 26/10/15), Cambridge (blog dated 30/7/15) and Warwick (blog dated 8/7/15).  Why was I fooled into buying the same design tea towels, just swap the name?  I already had the other three.  Maybe writing this blog has made me more discerning: in Sidmouth I bought a really cute tea towel with a blue border and a beach scene.  I liked the tea towel but I have since seen exactly the same style in Hunstanton and other Norfolk seaside venues.  I have learnt to try and avoid duplicate styles; it’s really difficult to do when you have so many tea towels – it’s trying to remember what I’ve got that is the problem!!

I distinctly remember buying this tea towel in Norwich when I was there in 2009.  I was quite excited by the fact that this was one was about Norwich itself, because my other tea towels from Norwich came from the Coleman’s Mustard Shop which does have deep roots in Norwich, but the images are about mustard (blog dated 18/1/16).  What I realise is that a good tea towel inspires a blog and this gives me nothing new, it doesn’t inspire me.  Sorry.

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The England, Wales and Northern Ireland Collection