Month: January 2021

The Plate That Outlasted Safeway

A cream ceramic plate with a fine, crackled glaze and scattered flecks of colour, resting on a dark speckled granite worktop lit by a blue glow on one side.
A well-worn plate’s crackled glaze catches the light.

This is just a plate. It’s an ordinary plate: off-white with some tiny flecks of colour in the glaze. The colour is not very noticeable. It’s one of a pair, and there is also a pair of matching bowls. I’m certain there were some matching side plates once upon a time.

They’re plain without being too plain. They seem just plain enough to be neither fashionable nor unfashionable—although, to be honest, I have no idea if trends in crockery really exist.

In September 1989, I bought the plates from a branch of Safeway in Shrewsbury. I was heading to university, and two plates, along with the bowls, side plates and a couple of knives and forks, were coming with me. They were used almost daily during the four years I studied.

I don’t know where the side plates went—maybe I imagined them—but I still have the dinner plates and bowls. They have remained in regular use ever since, packed away and moving whenever I moved house. If I had to guess, I’d say they were used weekly. There is a more recent set in daily use, but these were always handy and slightly bigger, capable of holding a full portion of fish and chips from my local chippy.

Today, PY discovered a crack in this plate. It’s unusable and about to break but, before it gives up, I thought I’d take a picture.

It has outlasted the Safeway supermarket brand in the UK, which is an odd fact but one I feel the need to note. More than 30 years seems pretty good going.

I wonder how long the other one will last?

200

Two directions at once

High Cedar Drive Bus Stop

A New Year’s Day walk to Wimbledon Common. Taking a minor diversion along Copse Hill you come to this bus stop (and there will be a similar one on the other side of the road). This bus stop is an oddity – although I imagine there are other examples elsewhere. – because this stop is going in two directions at once. It’s not an indicator to get on a bus in the opposite direction across the road, no, you can board here but you must get on the correct 200 because, for this little leg, buses going in both directions pass this stop. The Copse Hill and Atkinson Close stops are part of a loop that buses in both direction take. I don’t know why but I imagine it is to do with serving the expensive new apartments on Wimbledon Park Hill. Still, if you get on here, make sure you get on the one going to Raynes Park or Mitcham because in about 5 minutes from this point you could be going in the wrong directions.

The ladies who bus did this route back in 2009 and when they passed The Collier’s Wood Tower (once deemed the ugliest building in London) which they said looked like it was “about to be demolished” but turned out to be mid-regeneration becoming Britannia Point by about 2017. Also, the Waitrose at Raynes Park had just opened when they rode the 200 – the place that became a lifeline to so many this past year and I am very glad was opened.