It is Sunday in the family home. Tomorrow the workmen arrive and the new kitchen will be installed. All fitted units, pressed steel and fake marble. Multiple little tubs overlooked by elaborate taps with instruction manuals of their own.
I look at the big white rectangle of the old Butler sink, there since the 1860s, about to be torn out along with its lead plumbing. I’d never thought about it much, but now it talks to me. It speaks of history and events, it quietly documented our lives day by day. It brings up unexpected memories.
Like the blue swirls of ink from cleaning fountain pens under the tap, lighter and lighter shades of blue but tenacious, taking an age before squirting clear.
Then there were the red swirls, as blood dripped from my nose following a street fight with Tommy Jenkins.
And gentler things, mother bathing my baby sister when she was too little for the bath, how she would bare an elbow to test the temperature, adjusting taps as it filled.
Once it held tropical fish, whilst their leaking tank was repaired. Their turquoise and orange darting brilliant against the ceramic white.
But it is the everyday that takes new relevance on this, its last Sunday. Now noticing that the bottom is lightly scratched with the grit from hundreds of sacks of potatoes, eyed and scrubbed of earth over the years.
The wooden draining board, bleached from daily scouring and the scrubbing of a thousand shirt collars.
Filling with clear water, the drain hole, all worn to brass, now gleaming like a Celtic medallion at the bottom of some Arthurian pool.
A squirt of squeezy and it disappears beneath bergs of foam rising above even its ample parapets.
Plate rack taken from the back and placed flat on the drainer. Window cracked open to clear the steam. In go the dishes. It takes them all. Glasses out first while the water is still clear. All plunge and clank as waves of water occasionally breach the side overflow channel, the only intrusion into its bold rectangular form.
Its later Edwardian taps, crested with four balls, a local north south east and west and small white enamel domes bearing the legend Hot and Cold, the cold having a little fleck of blue, an incorrectable blemish glazed in at the pottery. With new washers they would sit squarely aligned when off, but now sit at obscure angles, misdirecting the daydreaming mind.
Mondays the mangle would come out indicating the change of use to laundry and a box of Daz or Persil shaken in and dissolved with a few swishes of the motherly hand. Shirts held under, as the captive air, bubbles through their fine fabric. Then roughly wrung out and stacked on the drainer. Soapy water out with a thirsty gurgle and the fresh rinse gushing in.
I look again at its walls, some inch and a half thick. A white glazed castle built to withstand all domestic assault from paint brushes and muddy puppies to watering cans.
It will survive, moving on as ‘architectural salvage’ to some yuppie kitchen in Chelsea.
But I realise that as we gain our modern kitchen we lose something greater, a stalwart that had sat quietly at the centre of our lives, for generations.
I look at the big white rectangle of the old Butler sink, there since the 1860s, about to be torn out along with its lead plumbing. I’d never thought about it much, but now it talks to me. It speaks of history and events, it quietly documented our lives day by day. It brings up unexpected memories.
Like the blue swirls of ink from cleaning fountain pens under the tap, lighter and lighter shades of blue but tenacious, taking an age before squirting clear.
Then there were the red swirls, as blood dripped from my nose following a street fight with Tommy Jenkins.
And gentler things, mother bathing my baby sister when she was too little for the bath, how she would bare an elbow to test the temperature, adjusting taps as it filled.
Once it held tropical fish, whilst their leaking tank was repaired. Their turquoise and orange darting brilliant against the ceramic white.
But it is the everyday that takes new relevance on this, its last Sunday. Now noticing that the bottom is lightly scratched with the grit from hundreds of sacks of potatoes, eyed and scrubbed of earth over the years.
The wooden draining board, bleached from daily scouring and the scrubbing of a thousand shirt collars.
Filling with clear water, the drain hole, all worn to brass, now gleaming like a Celtic medallion at the bottom of some Arthurian pool.
A squirt of squeezy and it disappears beneath bergs of foam rising above even its ample parapets.
Plate rack taken from the back and placed flat on the drainer. Window cracked open to clear the steam. In go the dishes. It takes them all. Glasses out first while the water is still clear. All plunge and clank as waves of water occasionally breach the side overflow channel, the only intrusion into its bold rectangular form.
Its later Edwardian taps, crested with four balls, a local north south east and west and small white enamel domes bearing the legend Hot and Cold, the cold having a little fleck of blue, an incorrectable blemish glazed in at the pottery. With new washers they would sit squarely aligned when off, but now sit at obscure angles, misdirecting the daydreaming mind.
Mondays the mangle would come out indicating the change of use to laundry and a box of Daz or Persil shaken in and dissolved with a few swishes of the motherly hand. Shirts held under, as the captive air, bubbles through their fine fabric. Then roughly wrung out and stacked on the drainer. Soapy water out with a thirsty gurgle and the fresh rinse gushing in.
I look again at its walls, some inch and a half thick. A white glazed castle built to withstand all domestic assault from paint brushes and muddy puppies to watering cans.
It will survive, moving on as ‘architectural salvage’ to some yuppie kitchen in Chelsea.
But I realise that as we gain our modern kitchen we lose something greater, a stalwart that had sat quietly at the centre of our lives, for generations.