Jubilation celebration

Well any excuse to get the old stuff out really!! You might remember my union jack bunting from Flickr - this was a bargain car boot buy from last year - muslin and has 'Made in Britain' on each one, all for £4.

I bought a few of these Polish wooden dolls a couple of weeks ago at the car boot - the woman selling them said that she had over 100 (a woman after my own heart!!)

The cake tin is a fresh purchase (because I really, really needed another cake tin....) from a charity shop for £2.50. The two larger flags I think date from WW1 - bought decades ago in a charity shop

The old Melaware cups are in everyday use and have bought lots of these from car boots over the years - ideal for beach use!

In time for the Olympics I will get out more my London regalia!

In this embroidery I like how the '2' is embroidered in red, white and blue

This newspaper I have had for many, many years.  When we were nine we moved home and I remember very well foraging around in the attic and found a pile of newspapers.  I thought that was treasure beyond my wildest dreams!! All were about the Coronation and this is one of them!  When I took these photos I could not find my 'collection' (grand) of Coronation scarves - they will undoubtedly turn up after the event!

Recognise the envelope?  This is the one that I used for my 'Custards' purse a while ago.

I took advantage of a nice sunny day

I like all these photos so cannot decide which ones to edit out.....I will being doing this over the next week when I look at them 'live'.

I view the Jubilee as an opportunity to have some fun...

 I like these embroidered brooches - I have a variety of themes and Bronte wears them too! I was first given one by my sister Sue as a birthday present when I was about 12 I think - it is my favourite one of all (all tiny embroidered flowers).

The embroidered tray cloth I have owned since I was a teenager...sad I know

Now I do like a double damask tablecloth and buy them even in a parlous state as they are useful for lining bags and backing bunting!  There were some very large ones a few months ago in the charity shop - £3.99 each so not bad for quality fabric even if no good as a tablecloth.  As usual wearing wrong glasses but when I paid for them the woman remarked how 'this one has got crowns on...'. When I reached home I realised that this must have been a coronation tablecloth - it is peppered with crowns, anchors, daffodils, thistles and shamrocks and roses.  It is beautifully cool, clean, soft, perfect condition and just ruddy marvellous. Damask is difficult to photograph but  I hope that this hints at its wonderment!! I will use this for coronation tea as it is very large.

Moving forward to more frugal times.  The puzzle bottom left was given to me by my mum in 1977 - Bronte now has it. Extra large teapot for lots of tea, the tin I usually keep odd scraps of embroidery in and the tea towel is used for drying up! These were difficult years for our family - very little money (see Flickr for me going on and on and on about lean times as a child - how I longed for a Tressy doll but never to materialise). Mind you even worse in the 50s I think - thank you to sister Sue for bringing a lump to my throat when she told me that as a child she had to wear men's shoes to school because they were cheap.....

How I longed for something NEW and SHOP BOUGHT to wear as a child - how times  have changed!! There is no doubt my frugal ways today stem from our childhood and having to save money all the time. Memories of childhood include sharpening knives on our grinding stone (I was usually the one turning the wheel - which by the way now lives in my garden), collecting used firework rocket sticks as kindling each November (how I longed for our own rockets - the height of luxury I always thought), collecting wood generally was a daily event,  plucking pigeons and game generally (very sneezy), skinning rabbits, eating every last possible scrap from an animal.  Lambs brains on toast was considered a great treat and cows tongue was my favourite Christmas meal with bone marrow stew. Oh and hock....with dried peas.  Of course liver and kidneys were a mainstay (I hated it when the liver was chewy - I now realise that I was trying to munch my way through the portal artery and that distinctive taste of kidneys was probably...cough, cough). I marvelled that Steven Harris had gone to Spain for something called a HOLIDAY.  If you have not clicked onto something else I will continue.....unravelling jumpers for re-knitting, drying clothes by the open fire and keeping the ruddy fire going at all costs (no other heating/cooking/hot water source being available). The summer of 1976 was doubly hot! A dominant theme was NEVER WASTE WATER - even today a running tap makes me feel sick. Our water came from a natural spring  in the field and was pumped into a tank in our loft - if the water table was low then our water was low.  For some reason I was the one in charge of the pump and was always sent to run up and down the stairs to check the level in the tank.  We also had lots of rainwater tanks in the garden and this water would be used for hair washing and more general usage (buckets of water were used to flush the toilets during '76)!  Phew! Anyone else drank cabbage water - mixed with Marmite for flavour? I was talking with my sisters recently and recalled how a car driving near to our house was such an event we would gather and wave.  Anyone else have a mobile butcher - another key event. A mobile chip van would call out of the blue about once a year - well I only ever remember buying them the once.  Of course my older sisters will top all this with the pre- cess pit tales and how contents of a certain bucket were buried in the garden (we did have a large garden) and at least we had main electricity by the late 60s and a BATHROOM. . Do you think that this might explain some of my collecting nature and difficulty in letting go? Never did me any harm...

  As far as I recall we did not attend any celebration in 1977 - we did not live in a town, village, city but lived by ourselves in splendid isolation.  I wish things could have been a little easier for our mum and dad - life was  hard for them and I never appreciated the difficulties that must have brought until more recent times. I am very lucky that 'making do' is something that I opt to do rather than have to do.  We are all cut from the same cloth in our family

Jubilation Celebration