My Mum’s Evesham Dinner Service
She barely notices it now. It fell off her consciousness radar a while ago, victim of an aging, ailing memory.
But a trio of dinner plates still try to catch her eye, aligned like planets in a row in a glass fronted cabinet, exactly how she had positioned them in 1986, their faces round, loud and proud with curvy curvaceous foliage n’ fruit playing peek-a-boo like burlesque dancers, buxom damsons the colour of midnight, blush-pink peaches like little cherub bums, corn on the cob peeling out of an off-the-shoulder number. My mum had never been able to resist.
Even if she hadn’t always known their names in English, they spoke to her in hieroglyphs that told of the bountiful harvests that could be found with hard work and thrift in this land of milk and factory where, despite the tempting representations on her dinner service, fruit, oddly came in tins.
The political slogan of the day was “ You’ve never had it so good.”
She hadn’t.
And she was mad for it, her Evesham dinner service. Buying a Mother’s Day gift was just a matter of ticking off the next item on the list, be it an egg coddler or a lidded casserole dish or a gravy boat that had all the swish and glamour of the Titanic.
But it was more than just trinket eye-candy.
It sent out a message to the world, of aspiration fulfilled like a Porsche to a 1980s’ banker. She had paid off her mortgage, she was now a woman of disposable income she could spend on desire not just need.
She could buy herself, a porcelain dinner service that would never be sullied by anything as base or vulgar as food.
And to this day this porcelain remains virgin, egg coddlers that have never coddled an egg, the gravy boat that was never launched on a maiden voyage, every piece as pristine as the day she bought it, as unpicked as the cherries on the souffle’ dish.
It was only handled when dusted with the utmost care with a duster made of feathers nothing heavier than the loving gaze she bestowed upon it.
But today she barely notices her Evesham dinner service. It remains a porcelain Miss Havisham stuck inside a glass fronted cabinet, longing for the love that will never return.
By Maria T De Stefano
Maria is a local published author and spoken word poet. Her poetry has been featured on BBC Hereford &Worcester Radio and on Brum Radio Poets.
This poem is dedicated to the former workers of Worcester Porcelain many of whom came from Worcester’s immigrant community.