Sharp As A Knife

The best way to feel happy with the thing I own is to try to replace them. 

 Persuading my grandparents to buy something new was virtually impossible. Their house as furnished with utility furniture they'd had since moving into their house in the early 50s. My parents eventually managed to get them to agree to a colour television and automatic washing machine. 

Now I understand some of the motivation for that. Obviously they had been through WWII where materials were a precious resource, but they also looked at the quality of modern products and doubted they were better than what they had. 

Fast forward to 2026, and me at the Trafford Centre.

On Wednesday we were eating and I complained about my knife, it was not quite straight and couldn't really cut whatever it was I was eating. The Chap looked sheepish and admitted he'd been setting the table for the past 7 years because he "did something" (I know not what) to said knife, and was keeping me away from it. We've had our cutlery for about 25 years, when we first moved in together, I think it's Viners Gresham, blah blah blah, we ended up last night looking for a replacement set*. 

It is not as easy as it sounds. 

Everyone at the charity shop laughs at me when spoon excitement hits, I can spot a good spoon in a pile of mixed cutlery quick as a flash. 

I did not see any good spoons in the shops, too light, too heavy, and especially too wide, far too wide for any sensible person to want to hold. The rest of the shopping experience was a bit of sensory overload, so we settled for buying some fruit and nostalgic soap from M&S.

*at this point no-one is mentioning the huge amount of Viners Studio I have stashed in the Ladderax that we could just use instead, but that's a small detail