Blog Post
Great Expectations

Now, if I tell you we have two stemmed glasses.  These glasses are about the size of small wine glasses yet quite plain and  bulky but we have always been told that they are very old, handmade and valuable.  We knew no more than that but I do recall my mother in law being quite protective about these glasses and that it was quite an occasion when she handed them over to us to cherish.

These glasses have always taken pride of place on the mantelpiece, have never been used for drinking from and have been well respected.

We decided therefore to wrap them carefully and take them along today.

We arrived around 10.30am and with the promise of a gorgeous sunny day – so did the rest of the population ! 

However, I have to say everything was very well organised and queues moved quite quickly.  People arrived with a whole range of treasures – I saw a statue of a naked lady being pushed along in a pram and a fairly brutal looking sword being battened down by security before being allowed into the main proceedings along with its owner.

A triage system filters treasures into the various categories, eg jewellery, silver, furniture, glass, toys, miscellaneous etc etc.

We then joined the glass department and I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Andy McConnell who is so obviously absolutely passionate about his subject, entertains the crowd and knows everything there is to know about glass.

He identified the glasses as being English lead crystal dating back to around 1750, hand made and described them as Small Beer Glasses,  He said small beer was a sort of bi-product of the beer making process of the time and was drunk often by the poor or working classes as water was not fit for human consumption.

I could feel myself getting quite excited by the history, age and authenticity of these two little glasses.  He then said re value !!  he values nothing less than fifty quid as thats an insult.  That is where his valuation started and finished.  So there you go.

We still love the little glasses, they have returned to their pride of place, they now have their story and have lived a very long life even though their value doesn’t reflect that.

I had a great day out – a real experience.

The garden is flourishing and I am currently harvesting raspberries and strawberries daily and they have been jammed, bottled, pureed and frozen.  My recipe this week uses them a little differently and I urge you to try this recipe.  These are little fruit bars – a cross between a shortbread and a flapjack.  They are easy, quick and will keep a week in a tin which is great news during hot weather.

http://www.nancybirtwhistle.co.uk/recipes/strawberry-and-white-chocolate-slices

Have a great summer time readers and speak again soon.