Cupboard Love

It might only be mid-August, but autumn is definitely in the air. I can smell its sharp mustiness in the early morning, and sense it in the mist that curls round the garden. And I am glad, for autumn is absolutely my favourite time of year. The bright, low sunshine gladdens my heart and fills me with energy. September for me is a time of new beginnings, a chance for resolution after the decadent laziness of summer.

And I come over all Mrs Tiggywinkle, unable to resist the urge to pluck shiny blackberries from the hedgerows and scoop windfall apples from the grass under the tree. I start collecting jars to fill with jewel-bright home-made jam and chutneys.

And there is one thing I lust after, more than anything by Tiffany, Bulgari or Cartier. You can keep your en-suite wet room with underfloor heating or your home cinema. What I really want is a proper larder. A little room off the kitchen (size doesn’t matter) with a stone floor, marble shelving, zinc-lined meat safes and iron hooks hanging from the ceiling. Capacious cupboards with hefty black hinges. Somewhere I can store all the food I am gathering in for the winter months – ropes of amber-skinned onions and nobbly garlic, baskets of rosy apples, strings of chorizo, bottles of sloe gin and damson vodka …

At the moment I’ve got a utility room with a couple of shelves from B and Q over the washing machine, but I shall still take pleasure in arranging the bottles, jars, boxes and packets in a pleasing order while I scour rightmove.com for my dream.

This entry was posted in Home on by .

About peter

'Death by Sushi' Fish can kill me. When I was very small (maybe 3 or 4 years old) my grandfather, who lost the sight of one eye from a bullet fired by a German sniper (fortunately not a very good one) during the Battle of the Somme in World War 1, wiped my face with the corner of his apron, an apron he had used to wipe his filleting knife on. He was a grocery shopkeeper who specialized in wet fish.