“Some pieces are more than furniture… they’re family history. They carry stories, memories, and connections to the people we love most.”

Refreshed Furnishings

I love this photograph (right) exactly because it is not pristine, not featuring everything in its place and with our restored front porch looking neat and tidy, ready for the next tour. No, this is reality. This is a beautiful rainy day with Rebekah working hard on a refinishing project while Max sniffs at the cool air and the long overdue raindrops.

What Rebekah is working on is my mother’s old tea trolly. I’m not sure if there is any other artifact that is more ubiquitous of my childhood. It even gets a mention – or several – in my memoir.

The trolly was a wedding gift back in 1952 and it probably worked pretty much every day of its life thereafter (it’s in pieces now – for the restoration – so I will have to use a stock image to show what it is supposed to look like).

The humble tea-trolly was essential furniture in the post-war English household and my mum certainly used it several times each and every day.

Not only could she literally roll “afternoon tea” from the kitchen into the living room, the top could be lifted off and carried upstairs as a tray, or into the garden if necessary.

I can see myself walking home from school in the afternoon anticipating the tea-trolly loaded with a pot of tea, sandwiches and some kind of cake, ready to roll out of the kitchen and into the living room.

If it was winter I would sit in an armchair in front of the fire, my food on one of the stacking tables, my golden retriever Lassie at my feet, and debrief from the day.

The trolly was always loaded down, both levels overflowing with more than enough. My favorite was when my mum would prepare baked-beans on toast, sometimes with a fried egg sitting on top.

In my memory it is a gray, cold, drizzly November day, almost dark as I make my way home from school; the house on Avereng Road is always waiting for me; my mum, my dog and the warm fire all anticipate my arrival. Family, routine, good food – the tea-trolly. That was home.

Just a simple tray with wheels, but saturated with love and comfort and beautiful memories – DEREK