BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

Lottie Williams

Kitchen

Your kitchen: a hopscotch-tiled floor, my table an artist’s studio turned Scrabble arena, and the thundering dryer. Hiding space of champions. Your cupboard holds the ingredients for my secret concoctions: mustard powder, vinegar, washing-up liquid and sugar. We begged to drink it, only to pour it out on the patio, disturbing Mr. Toad.

Your kitchen a nest, loving what it holds. You entertained the fantasy of flying south. A foreign place you’d make your own. Learning its beauty, culture and difference. You’d love the weather; he the birds, buildings, plants.

Kitchen of your eccentricities. A place to love, to live; not a place to enjoy culinary delights so much as curiosities. ‘Gwen’s Café’. Affectionately named. Baked beans, Scotch eggs and brown sauce. A place to dry out his spirit-soaked stamps. The issue of legality overshadowed by a philatelist’s fascination. Your windowsill holds memories of ceramic, terracotta and a perfectly-placed poinsettia; it holds your binoculars decorated in green patina. Copper chlorides and carbonates creating a condition of age. You look out the window while eating marmalade toast and observe magpies, goldfinch, blue tit, woodpecker. Ruminate over The Telegraph’s crossword.

Mr. Toad has gone. Your kitchen’s become nostalgia.