Teapot

Sunday, and I am on the taxi rank trying really hard not to waste all of our takings buying beautiful china on eBay.

The thing to do, of course, is not to look at it. That was the bit where it went wrong, really, I have promised myself that I will not look at eBay unless I have some money, and now I have broken my promise to me, and I am discontented because I do not have a teapot. This serves me right.

One of our recent innovations to our lives has been to stop drinking buckets of coffee. We have replaced our routine of first cup of coffee, followed by first second cup of coffee and then second second cup of coffee, by one single cup of coffee in bed, made in a jug with Farrars Extra Strong Serious Coffee and drunk black.

We have come to like this now that we have got over the shock.

The thing is that we have needed to replace the rest of the day’s coffee with something, and have gravitated to tea. I am not an enormous fan of the PG Tips sort, so when it becomes time for first second cup of coffee, and so on, we have taken to drinking Red Leaf Chai, also from Farrars. This does not come handily sewn into a little bag on a string and you have got to spoon it into a teapot.

We drink this out of some pretty teacups which I inherited from my grandmother. Unfortunately these match neither one another nor the saucers, nor the teapot, and the teapot does not match anything at all, except possibly the carpet.

Therefore I have been wondering about the purchase of new china, and of course the problem with wondering is that it quickly turns into ‘looking on eBay’, which even more rapidly turns into ‘overdraft’. Actually it doesn’t turn into an overdraft because we have usually got one. It turns into Mark looking anxious and me feeling guilty.

You will not be in the least surprised to learn that I have very quickly narrowed down the teapot candidates to two, both of which I really, really want and can’t decide about, and both of which cost a hundred and fifty quid, which even I think is a lot for a second-hand teapot, even if it does come with a milk jug and sugar bowl, especially because we don’t use either.

The thing is that both of them are really beautiful. One of them is a match to a very lovely sandwich tray that I have, also once my grandmother’s, and the other one is a match to my own much-cherished coffee cup. There is an option of purchasing a matching sandwich tray for this latter one for an extra forty quid. Also the teapot has a gilded spout, which is a huge selling point for my inner gypsy-magpie.

I suppose sooner or later I will come to a reckless moment and just make a purchase, after which I will have to start thinking about matching cups and saucers, it is not easy to be quietly contented with life when there are so many very beautiful things in the world.

Mark is sanguine about all of it, as he usually is. He observed that we actually feel happy when we look at pretty cups. Our coffee cups have made us feel glad in our souls again and again, because of their gilded handles and delicate patterns, and because of the pleasure in holding them comfortably in our hands, and so their purchase price has bought us lots of happiness and can be considered worth it.

We also considered that things like this which are part of a collection do not get thrown away but can be passed on to our children, and so probably count as an investment. I am sure the children will be completely delighted to inherit a dresser full of gold-painted mismatched old china. They can take careful photographs of any chips and resell it all on eBay to raise some cash, we will have to be careful they don’t bump us off in anticipation.

I keep wondering about a tea caddy as well…