Monday, January 31, 2011

Getting My Jugs Out


Ever since I bought my first home when I was 19, I have loved old ceramics.  At that house I had a collection of old jugs hanging from the ceiling in the microscopic "kitchen", which was actually created in the old pantry of the house.  Those old jugs have travelled around with me to another bungalow, a grand old farm kitchen, an inner city 10th floor apartment (where they marched along the top of the built in kitchen units), and now to the kitchen at Shoestring Cottage.  That kitchen will soon be remodelled.  (But dear reader, you will be pleased to hear that the "new" kitchen has been kindly donated by my sister in law Lisa, who is installing a new kitchen, so there will be no unnecessary expenditure.)  Until then the old jugs are all hanging out together at Shoestring Cottage and catching up on old times.  You will see from the photo that there is a McAlpine refrigerator jug, very useful and sturdy.  It is amusing to see reproductions of these jugs for sale now in design stores in central Auckland, in much the same way that there are reproduction of "swan" vases available.   The squirrel "jug" must have been designed for drinking beer I think - there is no pouring lip on it - and it was kindly given to me by my sister who scoured the second hand shops looking for lovely homely things I might appreciate. 

Well my dear friends, you will be sad to hear that poor Mr Shoestring has been feeling singularly unwell.  He has had a sore back and has been unable to enjoy many activities he usually takes for granted.  (Thank goodness he is finally beginning to feel more like his usual self.)  This weekend he was able to climb up the ladder (loaned by friendly new neighbours) onto the roof and I needed to clamber up also, to lift up the sheets of roofing iron so he could enter the roofspace.  This was so we could search for a source of the dripping water which had been falling on me in a monotonous fashion in the middle of the night this weekend, when we experienced a torrential downpour similar to that we experienced last weekend.  We believe we have found it and corrected the problem.  It was a very exciting experience and Mr Shoestring is even now grinning at his recovery.  While Mr Shoestring was in the ceiling space he discovered some blackened timber beams and this confirmed what we had suspected - the reason the top had been taken off the chimney was that there had been a fire and the owners of SC did not want any repeat performance - it must have been very exciting, not to mention rather terrifying.  We are going to contact the local voluntary fire brigade to see if they have records of when this formidable event occurred.