Home Shopping......

...in conjuction with some other folks, I'm taking part in the great idea which Floss of http://trocbroc.blogspot.com has come up with called 'The Thrill of What You Already Have' which in essence is about finding things around you which you enjoy or have enjoyed in the past - or which you've maybe even forgotten you had - thereby omitting the need to go out and spend your hard-earned cash on anything new, while at the same time, slashing your carbon footprint! Best of all, it's all FREE because you've already got it...!

My idea for the post came from the picture which introduces Floss's post -

First of all, The Glen in Dunfermline was a favourite place for the Annual Miners' Outing which my Grandfather, who was a coalminer, used to take my sister and me on at the height of the Summer and it was a Grand Day Out from beginning.....getting on the bus and attaching our streamers to the windows to let everyone know we were on our 'trip'.....to end.....getting off the bus and buying our fish and chips for tea and talking about what an exciting day we all had....seems like another lifetime ago now!...

.....then I thought about the colours in the picture which subsequently led me to thinking about my hometown and this little story about some pottery I have....it's all relative....all will become clear.....indulge me a little!...

My little collection has been carted around with me for years, from house-to-house each time we've moved and was almost confined to the deepest darkest recesses of the attic before I saw Floss's gem of an idea, so thanks Floss for the inspiration and for technically rescuing my little treasures....and for the little trip down my Memory Lane!......Here's their story...

My younger sister and I used to be very close and in the early 80's we had our first born sons within a year of each other, in fact their birthdays are one day apart - they could have been on the same day but the hospital was too busy on that particular day to start me off so I had to cross my legs for an extra day!......in those pre-daytime-tv days, we spent a lot of time together, bringing up our babies (both our husbands worked very long hours back then, resulting in a lot of 'alone' time). She practically taught me all about child-rearing because she'd already had a year's more experience than me! Anyway, when me and the Baby went to visit her and if the weather was good, we used to go a-walking around our hometown which is where she lived. One day we passed a little old stone house with a sign outside it which said 'New Pottery Open - Browsers Welcome'!....so in we went, complete with babes-in-prams and had a wander around the warm and welcoming interior. The lady who owned the pottery was called Dorothy Clyde and before she opened her own place, had worked with the famous 'Buchan of Portobello' factory, designing and making their pottery.You may have heard of them, or even collect the pieces yourself....they're quite popular. To cut a long-ish story short, every week my sister and I would visit Dorothy in her lovely new surroundings and order a small piece of pottery from her which she gave us at knock-down prices and pretty soon, we ended up with quite a nice little collection of mugs,bowls,milk jugs,etc!

 It's not to everyone's taste...some would say it's dreich (pronounced dreek) and dour (pronounced dooooer... rolling your r's..very important!) and Cath Kidston it very definitely is not and some of it's a bit worse for wear (my 'Baby' will be 30 years old in April!), with a few bits consigned to the bin in pieces .....it could be replaced, at cost...it's all very collectable now.... but to me it holds a great deal of very precious memories......I'm also putting it back out on display so I can see those memories everyday...for a while. Pop over to Floss's place and see what other treasures there are to be uncovered. Home Shopping....the best kind of shopping!  Enjoy.x

ps the large pot above is an original from the 'Buchan' Pottery which I 'knicked' (I asked him very nicely!) from one of my brother's-in-law before he found out that is was highly collectable!

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