Aunt Emily's Teapot

Copyright Oggbashan February 2020

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a true account. The only name changed is that of the author.

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My Aunt Emily (1897 -- 1987) liked Darjeeling tea. The rest of her extended family preferred ordinary tea such as Lipton's or own brands like Home and Colonial or Sainsbury's.

1951 was a tragic year for the family. My older sister Brenda caught Polio in the time before a vaccine was available in the UK. She was in hospital dying, one of 271 to die that year. Brenda was twelve years old and had been enjoying attending a private fee-paying grammar school for girls for which she had won a full scholarship.

One Saturday my parents and older brother were visiting Brenda in hospital. I had been to see Brenda several times but that day Aunt Emily decided she would take me out for the day to visit the Festival of Britain. We caught an early train and went to the South Bank exhibition. I was surprised and excited by the bright colours and geometric shapes so unlike the soot stained and bomb damaged London I was used to. It was so different and slightly overwhelming for a seven year old boy.

Although I enjoyed much of the exhibition some of it was beyond my understanding at the time. Aunt Emily bought me two things -- a Festival of Britain Crown coin in its scarlet box and a small bar of Festival of Britain chocolate. That chocolate was the first I had ever had because sweets were on ration but Festival of Britain chocolate was not rationed except that you could only buy one per person. It was a hot day and some of the chocolate melted before I could eat it. The crown coin I still have has traces of that chocolate in the inscription on its rim.

She bought a two-cup Festival of Britain teapot for herself. Clutching our purchases we caught the Festival boat up river to Battersea Park where the Pleasure Gardens of the Festival of Britain were built. That was far more attractive to a small boy. We rode on Emett's railway behind the locomotive Nellie which amused me as I had a Great-Aunt Nellie. On the hour we went to see the Guinness Clock in operation and then went along the Tree Top Walk. I was impressed. My mother didn't like heights but Aunt Emily was unworried.

We came home by train after a bright, colourful and exciting day. I couldn't talk about it to my parents and brother who were still sombre after visiting my dying sister. I had to wait until I met my school friends on Monday. In retrospect that was the only happy day of 1951. A few days later my sister was sent home to die as the hospital could do no more for her.

Until that day Aunt Emily had been unhappy with her tea. The family used a dark brown ceramic tea pot for their tea, Aunt Emily used a similar sized but light brown tea pot for Darjeeling but it was really too large. If she only part filled it the tea didn't brew properly. If she filled it, it made too much for her and she had to throw away expensive tea. But from that day onward until she died she used her Festival of Britain tea pot. It made two small cups of tea, just enough for her and over the years it built up a thick patina of Darjeeling tea inside. She never washed it, just rinsed it out with cold water.

Sometimes she would take me shopping in Croydon to buy her Darjeeling tea. We would catch a bus to Thornton Health and then switch to a tram into Croydon. There we would go to the Importer's Coffee Shop to buy her Darjeeling. The tram stop for the return to Thornton Heath was right outside the shop and the extractor for the roasting oven wafted the smell of roasting coffee beans over the queue for the tram. To this day I associate the scent of roasting coffee with trams.

The only other person in her extended family who liked Darjeeling tea was her niece Hilary. When Aunt Emily died she specifically left her Festival Teapot to Hilary who also used it until she died and then left it to her daughter who still has it and uses it daily. It still has decades of Darjeeling residue inside.

Aunt Emily left me some money in her will. I used a small part of it to buy my own Festival of Britain teapot to remind me of Aunt Emily, that exciting day at the Festival and my sister Brenda. I have never used it. I prefer coffee.

But now I am dying myself. There is no one in my family who remembers my Aunt Emily or my sister Brenda so the Festival of Britain teapot will mean nothing to them. I just want it to go to a good home where it will be used, if not necessarily for Darjeeling tea.